Transcript
00:00:00Hello friends, I'm bringing a brand new live show across the UK and Ireland this October.
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00:00:26There's a lot to pay attention to right now, given how many global conflicts are happening,
00:00:32shifting political powers, populist uprisings. What do you think is the biggest threat to global
00:00:37peace at the moment? The biggest threat to global peace, we're about seeing our midterm elections.
00:00:42It's the internal divisions in the United States. Those internal divisions have been building for
00:00:48the last five years. They've been normalizing political violence in the United States.
00:00:53They've led to the rise of leaders in the United States that find the use of political violence
00:00:58increasingly normal. That's how we got to the Iran war. And so that, a lot of the specifics
00:01:05that we see, Chris, around the world, I think it's very important to understand that there is a hub.
00:01:13The United States is the most important, the most powerful country on the planet.
00:01:17And what happens internally in the United States can have ripple effects around the world. And so I
00:01:25think it's really important to not just talk about all the other issues, but to see the United States
00:01:32is at the center of many, maybe not all, but many of those issues. And what's happening internally in
00:01:38the United States, this is increasingly becoming a house divided.
00:01:42What do you think?
00:01:43I think the United States right now is the greatest threat to global peace, because for
00:01:48the past 30 years, Pax Americana has been dominant. And now with the rise of other powers, the United
00:01:55States refuses to cede its global hegemony. And this is why we're seeing conflicts all around
00:01:59the world, specifically in the Middle East.
00:02:01I don't see a global conflict coming. Many regional conflicts are coming, because the global system
00:02:09is restructuring itself. There is not really a global system at this point as there was during
00:02:16the European Imperial Age or during the period of after World War II. So rather than looking at a
00:02:26confrontation like nuclear war between the United States and Russia, we're looking at various smaller
00:02:34elements. Sometimes the United States gets involved. But as to the international conflict,
00:02:40I lived through the 1970s. It was intense in the United States, but it was intense of a very small war.
00:02:47So the idea that there's a global system at this point, it's emerging. But because it's not emerged yet,
00:02:54many of the wars are going to be regional.
00:02:56Right. So you still see, is it right in thinking that Ukraine, Iran, whatever happens, Taiwan, China,
00:03:03that these things are separate conflicts rather than part of a single global conflict?
00:03:08Well, I think that we may, the three of us disagree about whether or not there will be a World War III,
00:03:14a true unified global war. I just want to point out that right now we're experiencing multiple regional
00:03:23conflicts. They are linked in some ways, but together they are wrecking the global economy.
00:03:30They're having a major effect on the global economy of what's happening in Russia,
00:03:37with the Russia-Ukraine war, what's happening in the Iran conflict. And if we had a conflict with
00:03:44Taiwan and China on top of that, even if those remain three separate arenas, Chris,
00:03:52we might be heading to something far worse than the 1930s depression for the world. So this would
00:03:58have blowback effects on Africa, even though they wouldn't even be involved. So we can usefully talk
00:04:04about whether we should expect a true World War III scenario, but we are already seeing global consequences
00:04:15in ways we haven't seen since World War II. We did not see these global consequences in the Vietnam War,
00:04:22for example. We did not see these global consequences with the two, what we called forever wars, Iraq and
00:04:28Afghanistan. We're seeing them now. And that, even if it doesn't become army on army, Chinese army on
00:04:37America, that kind of force on force, this is already amazingly consequential for our lives.
00:04:44Hmm. I think what's really important to appreciate is that, yes, these conflicts are regional,
00:04:51but there's a power orchestrating these conflicts, and that is the United States. So it is the United
00:04:56States that unilaterally, without any reason, decided to attack Iran, which started the war in the Middle
00:05:02East, which is right now threatening to destroy the global economy. The war in Ukraine can also be
00:05:07blamed on the United States because at the onset of the war in 2022, Putin and Zelensky would have come
00:05:17to an agreement, but Boris Johnson flew into Kyiv and convinced Zelensky to fight this war. Right now,
00:05:26in Southeast Asia, the United States is withdrawing, but we're seeing Japan being re-militarized,
00:05:32and we can imagine that Japan is being supported by the United States. In fact, if you look at the
00:05:36National Defense Strategy, which was published by the Pentagon early this year, it calls for the United
00:05:43States withdrawing from the global stage and creating balance of power in each different region:
00:05:48Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. So you can make the argument that the United States is
00:05:55intent on maintaining its global hegemony, but it recognizes that it doesn't have the military power,
00:06:01the political will to control the entire world as it did in Pax Americana. So it is
00:06:06basically offloading its responsibilities to its regional allies: NATO in Europe, Israel in the GCC in
00:06:12the Middle East, and Japan in Southeast Asia. See, I agree with about 70% of what he's saying.
00:06:20That's pretty good. Well, I think you're really on it. And I think that the parts I really agree with are
00:06:27that American decisions have been at the taproot of both of these wars: the war with Russia and Ukraine
00:06:36and the Iran war that we're experiencing right now. Where I may disagree is I think that they're very much
00:06:46a function of decisions and decision-makers that have been evolving given our internal divisions in our country.
00:06:55I think that we shouldn't look at this as simply a product of a global cycle of empires.
00:07:01I think we need to see that for the last 10 years, we have seen – 10 years, not just two years – an incredible rise of political violence in the United States.
00:07:13That is being driven, Chris, by major social changes inside of the United States. The shift from
00:07:21a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy for the first time in our 250-year history,
00:07:28the shift of massive wealth to the top 1% over the last several decades. These are having amazing consequences
00:07:38inside of our government. It's producing a set of priorities and leaders which are very different.
00:07:46So we are now seeing leaders that find political violence normal. And this is what you see with
00:07:55President Trump, both in his first term and now increasingly in his second term, and also some by
00:08:01Democratic leaders. You're also seeing, because of these internal problems, Chris, I think not
00:08:09sufficient attention to the consequences of these global decisions. So I don't believe that we have,
00:08:18over the last 10 years, devoted the amount of attention to the consequences of issues with Russia and Ukraine,
00:08:29issues with Iran. And I think that because I've advised every White House from 2001 to 2024. I know
00:08:37something about this degree of attention. And I am overall observing not no attention. I think that's
00:08:47not quite right. And I don't mean that they're truly trivial. But nonetheless, the idea that we would
00:08:57continue to support NATO expansion and make Ukraine a much, much stronger country, even after Putin takes
00:09:09Crimea in 2014, without serious attention to the consequences, I think this is, there's just not,
00:09:16there's too much we need to see. As we're becoming internally absorbed, we're having, we have less cognitive
00:09:25space for the thing that I often do, strategy in the rest of the world. And that lack of cognitive space
00:09:34has not just been a function of one president, I think it's been a function of multiple presidents.
00:09:40And I think that's really what, maybe it's not a disagreement, it's what I would say,
00:09:44maybe an extension, or I would add to what you're saying.
00:09:46I guess people keep debating whether America is losing its grip as a world superpower. 20 years
00:09:52from now, do you think America is relatively stronger or weaker than it is now?
00:09:56I would say it's not losing it, it's wanting to lose it. The past 80 years has not been a happy
00:10:02time for the United States. For the United States, the fundamental principle is command of the sea for
00:10:09long time. Keeping them away from the Atlantic ports was essential in this. This draw drew us into creating
00:10:18NATO, creating an economic system based on Bretton Woods and all these other things, that put tremendous
00:10:26pressure on the American economy. Even recently we had to bail out the Japanese in a way. So what I see
00:10:33the United States is doing, and these things are not gracefully done ever, is pulling back from its
00:10:40vulnerability to the world, not engaging it. Now the world is not seeing it that way because various things
00:10:50happened. Okay, one, the Cold War ended in Ukraine. The Russian army could not take Ukraine after five
00:10:58years. This is not a military threat. So now the Cold War is obsolete, and the idea of that, so the American
00:11:08desire, you know, is to dis, and what's predictable, was to disengage to the extent possible.
00:11:16But what the Americans are doing is not increasing their power around the world.
00:11:21It's trying to remove its vulnerability from the world, and the world feels betrayed. So the United States
00:11:27is no longer doing it. It no longer wants the role it had for the past 80 years.
00:11:34But if we look out 20 years, Chris, and you asked the question, well, right now we're 26% of the world's
00:11:40GDP. China, 17% of the world's GDP. So we still are number one, at least in terms of the numbers.
00:11:47And, uh, but if we look out 20 years, China has a tremendous advantage going forward, but it's not
00:11:53just the slope of the curve. Um, a big thing is happening, Chris, and it's been happening for the last 20
00:11:59years, which is we are losing the next industrial advance, the next economic revolution, and we're
00:12:07losing it to China. And we're not even noticing it very much, Chris. So in June of 2025, while we were
00:12:15bombing Fordow, I spent two weeks in China touring China's advanced industries. Uh, this was in, uh,
00:12:22Beijing, um, and this was in Wuhan. This was in Hangzhou. This was in Shenzhen. Most people go to
00:12:29China. First of all, they stopped going after COVID. And most people who went tend to go to
00:12:33Beijing and Shanghai. I want to see the actual advanced industries on the shop floor.
00:12:39From my point of view, China is a terrifically difficult position economically.
00:12:44Well, let's, let me just explain. You can challenge it, George, but let me explain what I mean.
00:12:48What I saw on that two week trip, I thought I was going to go and look at sort of Alibaba,
00:12:53see how they were a little bit ahead of different. I came away with a completely different impression.
00:12:59It was most important. I've been, I was in China in 1979. So I had some experience here.
00:13:04What I saw was not just uplifting of individual companies, Chris, uplifting whole cities,
00:13:12Wuhan, whole cities. So not just the advanced sector, the healthcare sector, the construction
00:13:19sector. Uh, when you look at what's happening in the cities, we're, we're, we're getting 10%
00:13:26of the idea of what's happening inside of China in the New York times and in the media, uh, February,
00:13:33I want to organize a trip to go back to China. Chris, if you want to come, I think you'd find
00:13:38this really interesting because it's what's, so I was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. I went to the
00:13:44university of Pittsburgh in the rust belt. That's a, if you go from Chicago to say Pittsburgh, that's
00:13:49about, and down to St. Louis, that's about 50 million people, give or take. Well, that's about the
00:13:55half moon Crescent from Wuhan to Senchen, not identical, but pretty close as, as you know,
00:14:02that area is a huge country. It's a huge country, but that Crescent we're talking about what China has
00:14:08done. And literally in about 10 or 12 years, it has some roots in the nineties is they have uplifted
00:14:14those in that entire 50 million people, Chris, they integrate. Why are they ahead? They're not just
00:14:23building companies. Their universities are tightly producing the BAs, the MAs, the PhDs. Why can't we
00:14:32produce more Patriot missiles right now? Why can't we just have an operation warp speed? We don't have the
00:14:38workers to do that because we're not integrating the advanced workforce with the advanced, with also
00:14:46advanced healthcare and by the way, advanced driver's license. China's cities is not China.
00:14:54The rural areas of China are profoundly important. It is the second largest economy in the world.
00:15:01In terms of per capita income, it's 71st. The fundamental problem that China has
00:15:07is it cannot consume the products it produces. Right now, Xi, just a few weeks ago, announced a plan to
00:15:16make more demands possible in the rural regions, which are very different from the coastal regions.
00:15:23And so when we look at China, we look at a country that has an economy too much, too large for it to consume.
00:15:31It is dependent on exports with the United States being the largest importer of Chinese goods.
00:15:38So we take a look at China and you take a look at how the the summits are evolving and what's happening
00:15:46there. We see very, I see a very different China from you. I see the cities in marvelous shape,
00:15:52the coastal areas and South China, but that's not the majority of China. The Chinese still have the
00:15:59rural area where Mao Tse Tung went to raise the rebel army on the long march and bought it back. And
00:16:08that's what it did. Now, when you look at it from the kind of point of view on a global basis,
00:16:14it is the second largest economy. When you look at its ability to sustain itself, it heavily depends on
00:16:21exports. And one of the things that… Because it can't consume what it produces?
00:16:25It can't. It can't possibly. It has tremendous capabilities, but its per capita income is very low.
00:16:33So you see a situation emerging, as emerged several times before, particularly with the United States.
00:16:41The United States was a China of the 19th century. That is to say, first, the civil war took place.
00:16:49The United States, after that industrial rising, that heavily depended on exports to Europe. So when
00:16:56you take a look at the relationship between the economic issues and the political issues and so
00:17:03on and so forth, the nature of the United States is to simultaneously have deep divisions and be able
00:17:12somehow to manage it. So when I look at these events, and I lived through the '70s, this loathing of various
00:17:23passions. If you were not anti-war and went into university, you did not come out of that university
00:17:30frequently. So I'm not so impressed by the tensions within the United States. I don't know the period where
00:17:36they were there. We survived the civil war, which was really a big discussion. So I see the United States
00:17:44is constantly, dynamically evolving through tension.
00:17:49So if I was to categorize at least what I'm hearing so far, from your side, China, very impressive,
00:17:55not just the upward trend, but the integration, this almost like systemic blending of education in with
00:18:03industry, etc, etc. Beyond what we're doing.
00:18:06Yes. And internal strife inside of America, that's worrying. This could cause fracture and fissure.
00:18:12From your side, China, well, it's got some problems. Look at the rural area of this. Yes,
00:18:17you've got great development inside of the cities, but those are pockets that are relatively localized.
00:18:23That makes it lessen. Also, you've got this high export dependency because you can't consume
00:18:29what it is that you produce. And America's been through shit before. It can probably put up with it.
00:18:33Most of all, China is vulnerable because it depends on these exports. Assume that the other economies
00:18:41falter, where they can't buy it, or there's a political shift. The Chinese get into trouble
00:18:48because they must have access to the global market, the same way the United States had to in the early
00:18:54part of this century. Yeah. So when we look at all these things, okay, we say, okay, China has evolved
00:19:00dramatically. It has not solved its fundamental problem, which historically was there. The difference
00:19:07between the coastal regions of South China and the interior. This is what led to the revolution on the
00:19:14Mao Zedong. Yeah. And he didn't solve that problem.
00:19:17John, give me your perspective. We've seen two, two relatively diametrically opposed insights here.
00:19:23Give me yours. Yeah. So I am completely surprised by this. But unfortunately,
00:19:28and my wife's going to get very angry at me for this, but I'm going to agree with George on this
00:19:33issue. So let me explain my reasoning. So George mentions the vulnerability of the American empire,
00:19:38and that's the US dollar as a global reserve currency. The American people do not want this system
00:19:44because essentially the world can become a parasite on America, right? So if America has a global reserve
00:19:50currency, then America's capital markets are completely free and open and liberal. You cannot
00:19:57control capital flows. And this causes tremendous problems. For example, wealth inequality and financial
00:20:02financialization, the hauling out on the American manufacturing sector. Okay. That's one issue.
00:20:06Another issue is America needs to guarantee global peace and security. So that's why its army is
00:20:14spread throughout the world. That's why it's Pentagon budget is $200 a year. So the United States
00:20:21assumes a lot of costs and who benefits from this arrangement? Well, two forces, Wall Street,
00:20:27right? Because of the financialization, but also the Chinese Communist Party, because as George points out,
00:20:33China is an export dependent economy. In fact, you can make the argument that what China is doing is
00:20:39free riding on the American system, right? Because when Chinese ships export their goods to Europe,
00:20:47to the Middle East, to the United States, it's being protected by the US Navy. Not this Chinese Navy,
00:20:53the US Navy. China doesn't even have a blue water navy. It's the Americans that protect the seas. And when
00:21:00Chinese do exchanges, when they trade, it's through the US dollar. So China is completely dependent on
00:21:07Pax Americana. And so the idea that as Pax America is falling, China will rise makes no sense.
00:21:15And I mean, the reality is, as George points out, China lacks domestic consumption power. Its people do
00:21:22not spend any money because its people do not have any money. All the rich people are going where?
00:21:27United States. That's problem number one. But there's a huge problem that we haven't discussed,
00:21:31which is the demographic issue where China's aging rapidly because of the one-child policy. China has
00:21:37no workforce. That's why China is spending everything on robotics and on semiconductors and on AI,
00:21:43because China doesn't have the productive force it needs to carry it through the next 20, 40 years,
00:21:50because of the aging crisis. So China's in a world of trouble. But where I disagree...
00:21:55Is it in a bigger world of trouble than America?
00:21:57Oh yeah, absolutely. Because regardless of how you feel about the United States right now,
00:22:01the United States is a self-sufficient, resource-rich economy with a very vibrant, energetic, young
00:22:09population. China has the opposite problem, which is that it is extremely export-orientated. It's a very
00:22:16poor country, very limited resources. It's very dependent on global supply chains. And what's
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00:23:22So let me just respond in this way. I had exactly their image 10 years ago. Exactly their image. So I
00:23:31first went to China in 1979. Then I didn't go back until 2012, 10 trips from 2012 to 2015. Then I went back in
00:23:392025 into even as late as 2015, I had exactly their image. Here's what happened in this trip. And this is
00:23:49what really are the core things that I'm seeing. Number one, the Alibaba, BYD, Xiaomi, I didn't just go
00:24:00and look at the shop floors. I met with their executives. They showed me their growth plans.
00:24:06It's not just that they have been spurting up since COVID. So all this building, massively
00:24:12development since COVID. It's that since 2017, essentially the Trump tariffs that were first put
00:24:18on China in 2017 by president Trump, there's been a dramatic emphasis to disengage the development of
00:24:28the next generation of industries from China, from America. So you can't buy the cutting edge BYD vehicles
00:24:37here in the United States. You can't buy the next level Tesla's of Xiaomi here in the United States.
00:24:42And they're not trying to sell them here. Also, the whole issue with Walmart and so forth, that's the
00:24:48last generation of what's occurred. They showed me their growth models. They are still export oriented,
00:24:55but they're not export oriented to Europe. And they're not export oriented to the United States,
00:24:59although they take a little crumbs on the edges. It is built around Asia. They showed me their growth
00:25:06models. So they're really counting on are in Asia. Now, true in the short term here, there's some
00:25:12problems with the Iran war and of course, Asia. So we talked about that with the actual top VPs,
00:25:19the exact, the top executives. And they explained to me that the bottom line is the more the United States
00:25:26get sucked into a quagmire with Iran. Yes, they will run into some short term problems. But just like
00:25:34COVID, when they came out of those problems of the supply chain problem in COVID, they jettisoned ahead.
00:25:40They thought they were likely going to get ahead. And if you look at the numbers of what the BYD
00:25:45production has been this year in 2026, what the numbers of Xiaomi has been, the numbers at least we can
00:25:52see. They're not as good as they were hoping, but they're about at the same level as the last year.
00:25:58So China's not collapsing. The Chinese growth rate is down to a little over 4%. It was previously 5%
00:26:04and its greatest price was a 15% growth rate. And I'm saying this is the wrong measure.
00:26:09This would be like measuring America's growth rate without noticing electrification in the 1880s,
00:26:15which starts in this really small way. America has been great. Because since 1880,
00:26:23we have led every technological revolution since 1880. The AI revolution that we're right going
00:26:30through right now. We hope we're going to come out ahead. The stock market certainly betting on that.
00:26:37I'm telling you what I saw in China, it's not just about DeepSeq and Alibaba. They're building the core
00:26:44infrastructure to be able to beat us.
00:26:47If I may, let me ask you this question. So right now, Japan is re-militarizing rapidly.
00:26:54And it's building an alliance with India, the Philippines and Australia, the Quad, right?
00:27:00It seems to me in the long term, the intention is to embargo China, to cut off supply chains.
00:27:05With India coming into it, Indonesia coming into it, and so on and so forth.
00:27:10So from Japan all the way to India, there is at sea a blockade.
00:27:15That's right. So what is China's response to this possible embargo?
00:27:19So as I look out here, first of all, if you're quite right, that there's a military
00:27:25possible consequence here. I think President Xi's question to Trump was exactly the right question,
00:27:32which was, are you, President Trump, going to fight here if there's a conflict between China and Taiwan?
00:27:39And President Trump said he wouldn't answer that question.
00:27:42Because if you, yes, you have the Quad moving forward, but if you take out the United States from
00:27:48that equation, as I think we are heading in that direction, then this is just a very different
00:27:55competition between the Quad and China. They might fight, they might decide to fight just the Quad and
00:28:03China, but, and both will go down some, but this is not a sure winner for the Quad over China.
00:28:10So I think this would be a very different, and notice, this is not China provoking the war.
00:28:16That's right. This is, this is outsiders attacking China. And what is, what did Mao, what happened
00:28:21with Mao? This was a gigantic revolution inside of China to foreign conquest. So this is not,
00:28:28talking about unifying China.
00:28:30If I could, the Taiwan situation has profoundly changed. Inside of Taiwan,
00:28:37the population is divided almost down the middle, with the KMT, the Kuomintang, which is in favor of
00:28:46reuniting with China in some sort of way. That's about half the population.
00:28:52The other half of the population is very much opposed to it.
00:28:57From the Chinese point of view, Taiwan was a very great danger, because between Japan and the
00:29:03Philippines, Taiwan was a blocking force, the first island chain, the first island chain.
00:29:08Yeah. Yeah. That's the first island chain that they want Taiwan opened. Okay.
00:29:15The United States does not have a fundamental interest on Taiwan. So the idea is, we see that Xi is coming
00:29:24to the United States. And he has said this week, we're going to reach many great agreements in the United
00:29:31States. One of the forecasts I had was that this year, China and the United States would come to a
00:29:35fundamental understanding with each other. Why? China must have that understanding. The United States
00:29:41is not a trivial partner. Okay. It is the number one trading partner. And it is the only military threat
00:29:48to China. Therefore, accommodation is rational for China. And these talks have been taking place. So what I'm
00:29:56seeing in China is a tremendous amount of instability in the political system. The economic system is
00:30:03moving ahead properly. But China has a fundamental problem. Because as I said, it must have a decent
00:30:12relation with the United States. And the United States has said to it, we cannot be dependent on China for its imports,
00:30:19if it is also possible to go to war with us. That happened to us during the Arab oil embargo.
00:30:24We were dependent on the Arabs, the Israelis went to war, and they cut a bar. It was a disaster in 1970s.
00:30:31So if we are too dependent on a country with whom we have hostile relations, that's unsustainable.
00:30:37So you're suggesting that the US and China are going to become friends soon?
00:30:41We're not going to be friends. They're not going to be lovers. They simply need each other.
00:30:44So, and here I agree. So my whole point was not that we must then have conflict with China. In fact,
00:30:50when I was in China, I was giving talks, arguing that given everything I just said, I think that China
00:30:57can rise peacefully with the United States. That's my big position. And it's because when I look out at
00:31:04the growth of power, what is power today? Power is modernization, technological development. We see
00:31:12that right now with the drought, with what we're experiencing with Iran. We're not losing to Iran
00:31:18because of Iran's 4% of it's because of we're behind in understanding the second precision revolution.
00:31:27What's happening, Chris, is others are evolving. We're used to thinking we, the United States,
00:31:33are on the cutting edge of everything. And what we're learning is we're not on the cutting edge of
00:31:38everything. Now, that doesn't mean we have to go to war against China. I was also impressed.
00:31:43President Xi basically asked Trump about the Thucydides trap. Are we going to go to war? So I
00:31:50believe these are the right questions. I don't think we're heading to a war with China if we're smart,
00:31:55because what we need to do is develop our industrial base. We need to develop and modernize internally.
00:32:02This is a choice. Back to your question. Will we be replaced as the world's number one in 20 years?
00:32:09This is a choice. If we keep fighting these horrible quagmires, if we stop, if we don't develop
00:32:16internally here, if we don't catch up to China, the answer is yes. Given where we're at at the moment,
00:32:23looking at your respective crystal balls, which country do you think is the most powerful in the
00:32:28world in 20 years' time? The United States is the only global power. China is a regional power.
00:32:34You cannot push force into the Atlantic and so on. We can. So we're reaching a world that's very
00:32:40different. That doesn't mean that the United States is in decline. Certainly, I agree with you on many of
00:32:47these things. But I don't think it's fundamental to the position of the United States. It is the United
00:32:52States occupied a position in the world, which costed a great deal in many different dimensions.
00:33:00And the backing off from that reduces tensions within the United States and so on.
00:33:05I was thinking that there would be some sort of see-saw probably between China and the US,
00:33:09but maybe there was another player that I hadn't thought about. It sounds like both are in some form
00:33:15of mild decline. They're in flux. So my position is it's up to our leaders who's going to be number
00:33:23one in 2020. There's three dimensions of global power I would look at. Dimension number one is
00:33:31the country's GDP is a fraction of world product. Right now we're 26 percent. China's 17. But if you
00:33:38look forward here, this could easily flip flop in 20 years. The second is allies. How many friends
00:33:46do you have in the world? Well, look at what's happened with the tariffs. Look at what's happening
00:33:49with Canada right now today. What is happening is in the middle of this gigantic war that we're having
00:33:57with Iran. We are deciding to alienate friends. Well, who's likely to pick up those friends? It's
00:34:04going to be China. And then issue number three is our technological base, our growth. If the world
00:34:11economy goes over a cliff with our $40 trillion in debt, I think the idea that we're going to invest
00:34:17our way out of this in the AI, I'm just, look, maybe that will all work out, Chris. Okay. And we're
00:34:23going to be fine with 40 trillion. I'm laughing my way through the apocalypse. I don't know about you.
00:34:27Well, I'm just trying to explain. These are the problems I'm worried about.
00:34:30So I want to fix- Just one second. Let's hear it. Let's hear it from Professor
00:34:33Jing. So I think that these past 30, 40 years of Pax Americana have been unique in human history.
00:34:41Never before had we had a power that could span the entire globe. For the first time, we had a global
00:34:47reserve currency. Never before had one nation been able to dictate the global economy. So I think Pax
00:34:55American has been unique in human history. And I think we're reverting back to the mean,
00:34:59which is more regional dominance. So the way that I examine how nation states thrive or die is using
00:35:08three basic criteria, which is going to be very different from yours. But first, I look at energy,
00:35:13basically how hardworking are the people. Second thing is openness, which is how open are people
00:35:20to change? How much are they willing to absorb new ideas? And the third is cohesion,
00:35:26which is how much do they value their own neighbor. If you actually use these three metrics, okay,
00:35:32energy, openness, and cohesion, you find that in each region, one nation will dominate above all else.
00:35:39So in East Asia, it would not be China that dominates, it would be Japan that dominates.
00:35:44It will be in Europe, it will either be Germany or Poland, one of the two. Germany is more powerful,
00:35:51but Poland is more cohesive. And you can tell me next week what you find.
00:35:55It's more dynamic by far. Absolutely, absolutely. And it's more in danger,
00:35:59it seems. And that gives it power. That's much more energetic. Energy.
00:36:02That's right. And then in North America, it's the United States by far. The United States is so
00:36:07dominant that the United States could keep on electing Donald Trump for next year.
00:36:11It could face plant its way through the next few decades and still win.
00:36:14Unfortunately, that is the case of the United States. And then in the Middle East, I believe it is
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00:37:16Interesting on the US's ability to put both of its feet in its mouth and continue to be a preeminent
00:37:23power. Does that help to smooth over some cracks and inefficiencies and instabilities inside of America?
00:37:31The momentum, just the sheer size of it means that there can be issues burbling below the surface that
00:37:37don't get seen for a little while, and then eventually the sort of lid gets blown up?
00:37:41Obviously, you're talking about civil unrest. I don't know how likely you think civil unrest,
00:37:45proper civil unrest is going to be due to this.
00:37:47So I have coming out, Chris, a book called Our Own Worst Enemies:
00:37:52Congratulations.
00:37:52America in the Age of Violent Populism. It's pre-ordered now on Amazon. It'll be
00:37:58available in just a couple of weeks to be in your mailbox. And I've spent five years studying this
00:38:03problem because my work on political violence, what I do, Chris, is I look at where is the biggest
00:38:10threat to America, the biggest threat. So it changes from time to time. And what I started to see after
00:38:18the George Floyd protests, which were mostly peaceful, but what does mostly peaceful mean with the George
00:38:23Floyd protests when 28 million are protesting and seven percent are riots and political violence.
00:38:29That's millions of people who are unrest. And then also January 6th, this is the first time in our
00:38:36history that we've had a violent mob supported by the president of the United States to try to stop the
00:38:43constitutional process of changing presidential power in the United States. Then we've had the rise of
00:38:49political assassinations and assassination attempts. I could go on and on. This is, I would say,
00:38:56akin to the 1960s. I agree. We've had some periods of violent populism before. The book covers that.
00:39:03But what's different is it's on both the right and the left. The number one fact today is tens of
00:39:09millions of Americans on each side, I don't mean total, each side of the political spectrum, support
00:39:15political violence for the goals that they also support. That's why you're getting support for
00:39:22very aggressive ICE tactics against Democratic protesters, even after ICE kills those Democratic protesters.
00:39:29I would argue that this is not the first time it happened. We had a civil war. In that civil war,
00:39:34we ripped ourselves apart and then came together again. There's a strangeness in the United States.
00:39:40Most countries that have that kind of civil war could not accommodate itself again. We are historically,
00:39:47when we take a look at these various periods in history, at each other throats, it is one of the
00:39:53dimensions of the United States which is based on the fact that we're an invented country. Invented not
00:40:00only in the sense that the Constitution was invented, but that the population was invented. There was no
00:40:07other nations have histories of culture and so on. We constantly came together. So one of the things
00:40:14that the United States is very good at from the founding is being deeply divided because, as John Adams
00:40:21said, one-third of the people were for the revolution, one-third of people were against the revolution, one-third
00:40:28of people didn't care. That was his reading. So I see the divisions in a very different way than you do.
00:40:35Well, I don't think it's good enough to say that we survived the civil war because 600,000 people
00:40:41died in the civil war. So let's just be clear. We are 40 trillion dollars in debt. The idea that,
00:40:47sure, we'll just have a civil war and no problem. We'll get out of this just fine. This is showing
00:40:53how we've got to go to the civil war standard to say we can survive a civil war. No, we will not be
00:40:59able to be anything like, we won't even be a regional power. I disagree profoundly. There's a cultural
00:41:06nature. China has a culture. It has a history. It has an evolution. Britain has a history and so on.
00:41:12Okay. Thank you. When you take a look at... Or you used to. Shut up, dude. All right. Shut up. Okay.
00:41:20When you take a look at American history, you measure yourself and your state of your company
00:41:26against something. Otherwise, you're constantly in a feeling of this has never been so terrible.
00:41:34So you have to have a sense of proportion on what goes on. So when we look at
00:41:40the division in the United States between World War II, between the isolationists
00:41:46and the interventionists, we have constantly approached the world deeply divided. Okay.
00:41:53I saw that mentioned in the civil war because it was the most extreme example. But even the
00:42:00revolution was not a joint universal uprising. It was deeply divided. And my wife's family
00:42:09had to move to Canada because after they won... That's a high price to pay.
00:42:13Well, they were... The point I'm making here is that... Put me in the wall.
00:42:18One of the things about the Americans is we're constantly having the feeling we're going to hell.
00:42:24We have the ability to overestimate tremendously our weaknesses and underestimate the tremendous
00:42:31strengths. And this is where I have to respect you. I disagree with you. I look at the past as a measure
00:42:39of the culture and its flexibility and viability even under pressure.
00:42:45Do you think America is a country permanently in strife internally? Or is there something unique about
00:42:51the modern version of this? Well, let me also be clear. My book is explaining we're not heading to civil
00:42:55war. We are heading to violent populism and we're in the middle of violent populism.
00:43:01Can you explain what the difference is, please? Yes. Civil war is where you have armies going toe
00:43:06to toe. Truly, we're... This is battle after battle. So we start to see the movies on civil war.
00:43:11Yep. These are, I think, the extreme scenarios. And we can talk about extreme scenarios. I hope
00:43:19we would never get there. So I don't find them acceptable. But I don't think that's really what our
00:43:24future is. I think our future is more... We're more in danger of becoming Turkey, for example. Where,
00:43:31because we have normalized political violence, it starts to become normal for the president to absorb
00:43:39more and more powers under the presidency. And then also to sort of hide things. So this isn't just
00:43:47happening with President Trump. During President Biden's presidency, we had open borders, essentially. We had 10
00:43:53million plus come into the country. And yet this was all the image was, oh, no, there's nothing happening
00:43:59at the border. It's literally not happening. And that was by a Democratic president. So what I'm
00:44:06trying to point out, Chris, is that we're in a world where, because political violence is becoming
00:44:12normal and George is finding it, well, sure, it's just okay. It's just another day in America. This is
00:44:18what I'm... This is what the book's about. It's about how political violence has become
00:44:23normal for tens of millions of Americans for the first time since the 1960s. And this has consequences,
00:44:30because it's on both the right and the left. And we're coming to an election. And this midterms,
00:44:37we already have, and I was just on many podcasts, we have people who are terrified that President Trump
00:44:44is going to seize ballot boxes. Now, why would they be terrified of that? Because President Trump said he was
00:44:50going to do that in February. So this isn't just coming out of nowhere. And when I'm on those podcasts,
00:44:57I'm trying to say, yes, that may happen, but we will hold ourselves together. And here's how we're
00:45:02going to do it. So I'm not trying to tell you we're heading to civil war. I'm also not trying to tell
00:45:08you civil war would just be fine. What I am trying to tell you is, the way you're going to see
00:45:15powers absorbed by the federal government, things like use of martial law and so forth,
00:45:21is because political violence has become normalized.
00:45:24It's the normalization, which is the difference on your...
00:45:26And it creates...
00:45:27What's your perspective on internal strife in America?
00:45:29Right. So I think the best historical analogy for the United States right now is the Roman Empire.
00:45:35And the critical turning point for the Roman Empire is maybe 150 BCE. And this is the Third Punic
00:45:44War. This is before the Third Punic War starts between Carthage and Rome. At this point, Carthage
00:45:49is basically destroyed and it's just an economic center. It's no longer military power. And there's
00:45:55a huge debate in the Roman Senate about what to do with Carthage. Cato the Elder demanded the
00:46:00destruction of Carthage because Carthage would always be a threat to Rome otherwise. Everyone else
00:46:06was like, no, guys, we cannot destroy Carthage because if we destroy Carthage, what will happen is
00:46:12we will have no external enemy and we will start to tear ourselves apart. Cato the Elder won and they
00:46:18destroy Carthage in the Third Punic War. And then what happens afterwards? Complete civil strife.
00:46:23And after the Civil War starts, it starts about 100 BCE, something called the Social War,
00:46:34but it never really stops. Social War then leads to the rise of Julius Caesar, which leads to the rise
00:46:42against Caesar, which then leads to all sorts of wars. So that's a problem with the United States.
00:46:48The United States is part of the most violent country on this planet, like by far. There are
00:46:53more guns per capita. There are more guns than people. And like America is the only nation to play
00:46:58football. Am I correct to say only Americans play football? Cato the Elder: Yeah.
00:47:02Cato the Elder: So Americans have this tremendous energy. Cato the Elder: Hang on, hang on. You're
00:47:07going to have to draw the parallel between there's lots of guns in America and America is the only
00:47:11country to play football. I feel like I've missed something there. Cato the Elder: Right. What I'm saying is that
00:47:17Cato the Elder: It's a society that prides itself on the First Amendment and the Second Amendment.
00:47:21Cato the Elder: It's a society that is, by the standards of every other society,
00:47:26it's pretty aggressive. Cato the Elder: Right. The physical contact,
00:47:30violence. Cato the Elder: That's right. Cato the Elder: Like listening to Metallica and flying
00:47:33F-14s and shit. Cato the Elder: That's right. Cato the Elder: So with this energy,
00:47:36Cato the Elder: You can either direct it outwards to conquering the world or if you don't direct it
00:47:43outwards, then there's a fear that it becomes directed inwards, which could lead to civil war.
00:47:48Cato the Elder: It could be violent populism. It could be a civil war. It could also be
00:47:53an insurgency very much like the movie One Battle After Another. But I do think that right now at this
00:47:59point, domestic violence is almost unavoidable. Cato the Elder: Really? Why?
00:48:05Cato the Elder: You can agree or disagree, but I think there are certain trends that are in place
00:48:12Cato the Elder: That make internal violence unavoidable. So the first is just the wealth inequality,
00:48:20the financialization of society. Cato the Elder: This is what I was talking about. Cato the Elder:
00:48:23That's one trend. But another major trend is the gerontocracy, the baby boomers. So what's
00:48:32happened is that baby boomers, I apologize to both of you, the baby boomers have monopolized political
00:48:40power, economic wealth, and social status. And if you're a young person, you have absolutely no
00:48:47opportunity. Cato the Elder: You know, so James B Calhoun in the 1960s, he ran a very successful
00:48:53experiment called the Rat Utopia Experiment. Cato the Elder: He basically put rats in a paradise where there'd be no
00:49:01Cato the Elder: predators, free food every day. And all that happened was the rats just turned against
00:49:05each other and killed each other. And the reason why is young men, especially young men, they strive
00:49:10for social status. If you don't give them social status, if they're unable to climb the social hierarchy
00:49:18and find recognition and status, they turn violent. And this is just human nature.
00:49:22Cato the Elder: So we tried to get at this. So this book that I'm coming out with, it's a product
00:49:29of this five years of research that we've been doing at the Chicago project on security and threats at the
00:49:34University of Chicago, 20 national surveys, this is where all that millions of dollars. So and why we
00:49:41did all that was to try to answer some of the why questions. So we asked questions such as how worried
00:49:48are you, you won't be as prosperous as your parents that kind of gets at the wealth inequality and the
00:49:54social mobility. Well, we didn't just find out the general answer to that. We wanted to know,
00:49:59did that make you more likely to support violence, political violence? And it turns out, the more
00:50:05you think you won't be as prosperous as your parents, the more you support political violence on the
00:50:11right and on the left. It's a wedge, it drives both sides up. We also asked, remember, I mentioned the
00:50:19second social change, we're transitioning from a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy.
00:50:25Well, other countries in the world, this has played a huge role in political lines. That's why Lebanon,
00:50:29for instance, has had so much political violence over the years, over the decades. Well, this is not unique
00:50:35to America, but it's happening for us now, Chris, for the first time. And so we asked the question,
00:50:41if you are you happy with the transition to a white minority democracy, or are you unhappy and want to
00:50:48reverse it? And what do we find? If you want to reverse it, you are far more likely to support political
00:50:54violence on right wing issues. If you want to keep it going, you're more likely to support political violence
00:51:01on left wing issues. These are not happening in isolation. They're not just swirling around. And gee,
00:51:08it's kind of random why we're having a this rise of violent populism. Now, there are actual reasons
00:51:15and they overlap with some of what Jiang's talking about. But we're able to get to the data to see, well,
00:51:21let's do some tests here and see, can we really see it in the data? And the answer is yes. And this is
00:51:28why, um, so, uh, it's, it's been very worrisome, Chris, for some time. So a year ago, I published a
00:51:34big op-ed June, 2025 in the New York times. I was explaining this data in this op-ed and I was warning,
00:51:41we're on the brink of major political violence. And what happens? The Charlie Kirk assassination happens.
00:51:48What happens? We get the rise of operation midway blitz and then metro blitz. And that wasn't the first
00:51:54time, Chris. So a year before that, this data was showing a rise of anger to the point of violence
00:52:01against president Trump. This was in June, 2024. So I brought it to our national sheriff's association.
00:52:08So I'm connected with these. So remember advised white houses, et cetera. And I warned them that
00:52:14there's a non-trivial possibility that we're going to see a, uh, uh, assassination attempt against
00:52:20president Trump. When did you say this? This was the last week of June, 2024.
00:52:26Now they listened. I'm just going to say, Chris, they listened and guess what happened on July 13th at
00:52:34and then what happened in my phone is it blew up because suddenly people were
00:52:40mystic, literally blew up, but what I'm trying to say is Chris, this is. So just as my 20 years of
00:52:49modeling of the Iran war has led to some predictions about what might come in advance. We haven't,
00:52:55well, but, uh, that's of course been well known in this, at this point, this is not the first time.
00:53:00My work has been studying, um, political violence, not just in the rear view mirror, but with an eye
00:53:07toward giving real decision makers, whether it's chief of staff of the air force, west wing of the
00:53:12white house, uh, FBI, um, for, uh, I call it strategic intelligence. It's not tactical intelligence.
00:53:21It's where things are heading to see where probabilities of events in the future are shifting.
00:53:28That's my work. I don't, I don't disagree with you. We are in a violent time. I simply put that
00:53:34context of American history and American culture. So if we're doing something that we've never done
00:53:42before and never done before and recovered from and so on is very different from this is unprecedented.
00:53:50So when I look at culture, I take a look at the culture itself and its history
00:53:57and ask the question, is there a precedent for this? Okay. Have we, is this something we've never seen?
00:54:04If that's true, then there's a radical shift possible. If this is a cycle, a process of a cycle
00:54:12that periodically happens and comes and goes and is handled in the past, there's a high probability
00:54:18of a counteraction of it subsiding. So this is why I go back to things that don't seem very relevant
00:54:26because they went away. But if you'd lived through the 1930s with the isolationists deeply,
00:54:35in some ways anti-Semitic and everything else, and the tensions that were there, well, I've seen that.
00:54:40So when I talk about the Civil War, it's just to say this was the most extreme event of this sort,
00:54:47and we've survived. So I ask questions, not only is a crisis coming, which I completely agree with you on,
00:54:54but is it in the nature of the culture of the United States to withstand those crises?
00:54:59Yeah, I suppose. Okay, so your point is, this might not be terminal, this might not be existential
00:55:04to the United States. It's not exactly the point.
00:55:05I mean, does anybody think, like, even if there was a Civil War, there would be some people left,
00:55:10right? And then you've got a country afterward, like from the ashes, something can come back.
00:55:13What came out of that of Civil War was the most dynamic development economically, perhaps in history.
00:55:23Oh, this is like an accelerationist argument. We could...
00:55:26No, it has nothing to do with the causality or this is necessary. I'm simply saying to you
00:55:32that if you get a fever that you've never had before, well, that's really significant.
00:55:39If, on the other hand, you had another cold, you don't take it that seriously. I'm trying to put
00:55:44this in the context of the American nature. So I'm arguing there's a culture, there's a nature,
00:55:51there's a history. I just want to make two points.
00:55:53And one thing though, and one thing is, every time we sought, we were finished. During the 70s,
00:56:01the idea, the killings, the kidnappings and everything that were going on, well, they went away.
00:56:08So I'm saying there's a sick little process.
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00:57:09So I would just say two quick points. Number one is, I want it on the record, I am not pro-civil war.
00:57:15That's the acceleration. I just want to be clear. I just want to make sure I'm on the record.
00:57:20Number two, no, hold it. Number two, more seriously. So the point of the research of the
00:57:25book isn't just to give histories of the 60s, it's why did the violence in the 60s end? It ends for real
00:57:32reasons. It's not just we burn ourselves out. There were two drivers to the 1960s political violence.
00:57:38They're driven on social change. Drange number one was we had a massive shift in migration of Blacks
00:57:45to the North and the Midwest that were not getting political representation. That was underneath the
00:57:52Black riots, Malcolm X, the ballot or the bullet. By the mid 1970s, you start to have the Black Caucus.
00:57:59You actually get some Black. Now, it's not as good as it should be. I'm not trying to say it's perfect,
00:58:04but this is one of the big reasons why that violence comes down.
00:58:07There's a second driver of violence in the 1960s. It's the Vietnam War, the anti-war
00:58:12movement, conscription. What ends? It's not just the Vietnam War ends, Chris. Conscription ended.
00:58:18We end in 1973, conscription. So I never had to be conscripted.
00:58:26Something structural has changed.
00:58:28And that took the steam out of the anti-war movement. That's what ended the weathermen, the weather underground. That's what ended that violent protest here. Both of those issues end. So my point is, we can actually look today at the social causes and I can tell you we're likely to have this violent populism for another 10 years.
00:58:52You think that there's another decade of this?
00:58:54Yes, because of the social changes. We can talk about those shifts, Chris.
00:58:58Then I ask you the question, how does it end this time?
00:59:03I ask you the question, how does it end this time?
00:59:06I ask you the question, how does it end this time?
00:59:08I ask you the question, how does it end this time?
00:59:10I ask you the question, how does it end this time?
00:59:12Understand what's happening to us so that we can make more intelligent decisions going forward.
00:59:19It's not just a prediction of doom and gloom.
00:59:22It's things are going in a bad direction.
00:59:24Let's take that seriously and then let's do something to offset it.
00:59:28That's been my world with mostly foreign policy elites for the last 30 years.
00:59:34I'm now trying to do that with the public.
00:59:35Shane, do you reckon there's going to be internal strife for the next 10 years?
00:59:39Right, so back to the young man problem.
00:59:42So right now, there's a very popular phrase called hypergamy.
00:59:47I'm not sure if you know what hypergamy means, but you know what it means.
00:59:50Why are you looking at me as hypergamy?
00:59:53Are you saying that's because I'm a high-value male?
00:59:55That's right, that's right.
00:59:56Yeah, so the problem is that the majority of young men are not able to find a suitable mate.
01:00:04Because one way to reduce young men's violent tendencies is to get married, have children,
01:00:12and then become productive members of society.
01:00:14But if the majority of young men cannot get married, then what's the solution?
01:00:20Well, you send them off to war, right?
01:00:23So there are two possibilities ahead for the United States.
01:00:29How do you deal with these millions of young men who cannot get laid, basically?
01:00:32Well, you send them off to war to die.
01:00:35But if you did that, if you had conscription, it's possible they would just rather fight you, okay?
01:00:40So another solution is to colonize North and South America, to turn the entire Western Hemisphere into a U.S. colony.
01:00:50And they're doing that already with Venezuela.
01:00:51They'll probably do that with Canada.
01:00:53They're talking about Greenland.
01:00:55You think that realistically, America would try and colonize Canada, Greenland, and Venezuela?
01:01:01Not just, oh, we're going to take a couple of leaders here and have soft power.
01:01:06They would actually try to do that.
01:01:08Yes, I do, because you don't want to stop the United States from doing this.
01:01:12Why wouldn't the United States just take Alberta?
01:01:13What's stopping the United States from just taking Alberta?
01:01:15Is that not war?
01:01:17Is that not, like...
01:01:18Canada has what army yet?
01:01:20Yeah, yeah.
01:01:21The reason he's saying Alberta is that's where the oil is.
01:01:24So one of the things...
01:01:25And the Albertans want to leave, that's right.
01:01:27So with my classes at the University of Chicago, so not for the reason of the exact dynamic.
01:01:33I won't quite go that far.
01:01:34But what I...
01:01:35So having studied violent populism, I watched over 200 of President Trump's speeches as he
01:01:43was running for president.
01:01:44200 all the way through.
01:01:46I went to four of his rallies, which didn't mean you just go to his rallies and listen.
01:01:51To a Trump rally, that means you get there at 8:00 a.m.
01:01:53You're already three hours late because you can...
01:01:56And you can still barely see the stage, by the way.
01:01:59And you have to wait 10 hours and you can't move.
01:02:02If you move, you lose your place in line and you're all the way at the back.
01:02:06So that's why those hundreds of people are dropping over there.
01:02:09So what do you do?
01:02:10I surveyed them.
01:02:12I talked to them.
01:02:13I actually literally...
01:02:14That's what it surveys.
01:02:15And so I learned a lot about what was underneath the support for Trump.
01:02:20I also went to Harris rallies.
01:02:22And it was easier to get there.
01:02:24You get a 3:30, you still get a seat.
01:02:26So it was a little different there.
01:02:27So nonetheless, what he is describing here, you could see a lot of...
01:02:34In some of what President Trump was saying, he was planting some seeds.
01:02:39But come on, bombastic, this guy, gregarious, talky-talky.
01:02:43Like, isn't this a cool talky?
01:02:44Well, realistically, he's going to go to China?
01:02:47Hold it.
01:02:47That was all fine, Chris, until after the election.
01:02:50It wasn't just talky-talky.
01:02:53It got seriously-seriously.
01:02:55Okay.
01:02:56So I'm not telling you...
01:02:57I'm not telling you I immediately jumped to the conclusion,
01:03:01oh, that would be a 99% likelihood of happening.
01:03:04I work in percentages.
01:03:06Okay, what do you think is the percentage likelihood that Greenland or Canada or Venezuela
01:03:11are brought into the American remit?
01:03:16I think it turns hugely on what happens with this election in 2028.
01:03:24So if we are internally divided, as I think there's likely to be,
01:03:28I think this external expansion is likely to go down.
01:03:31However, if it turns out that this is not just we're not internally divided,
01:03:36but we see the MAGO red wave get stronger and stronger and stronger,
01:03:41there's a very good chance that what Zhang is talking about will come to be.
01:03:45Because these are...
01:03:47This is what I mean by it's up to us, Chris.
01:03:49This is wild.
01:03:50I did not think that I was going to find out that we were maybe going to
01:03:54invade Canada and Greenland and Venezuela.
01:03:56Why not?
01:03:56I just, it seems so intense.
01:03:59It's so absurd and this would be, it would be invasion.
01:04:05I'd agree with you.
01:04:06Well, I'm not, I'm not, again, the probabilities here.
01:04:09So let's be clear.
01:04:10I'm not saying this is 70% likely.
01:04:12So I deal in the world of probabilities.
01:04:15But if we're talking about where there is a world where this is even a 20% probability,
01:04:20this changes everything.
01:04:21The idea then if it's even 20% likely and notice what's happening with Carney,
01:04:26notice what's happening with the leaders.
01:04:28I don't think Carney believes it's 80% likely.
01:04:31But if you watch his speech, listen to a speech in Munich this year,
01:04:35he certainly thinks this is, there's something on the horizon.
01:04:38And President Trump has been talking directly to him about moving the border with Canada
01:04:44and the treaty and abandoning the 1908 treaty with Canada.
01:04:49This has been a direct conversation with the prime ministers of Canada in the last year and a half.
01:04:55This is, I don't say it means it's, it's a certainty, Chris, that's going too far.
01:05:00But to ignore that this is then translating into taking Venezuela's oil,
01:05:07serious war planning now for Greenland.
01:05:11The war planning doesn't equal conquest, Chris,
01:05:14but I think we're making a mistake to just simply dismiss it as,
01:05:18oh, this is just talk on the side.
01:05:20I wasn't dismissing it.
01:05:21I didn't even know that it was an option on the table.
01:05:22What do you think is more likely?
01:05:24China into Taiwan or the US into one of Canada, Greenland, Venezuela?
01:05:29Oh, I vote for the latter with the US.
01:05:34No way.
01:05:34Yeah.
01:05:35All of this talk, all of this talk that people,
01:05:38processes, the microchip, all of the China into Taiwan.
01:05:41And so I've been arguing for decades.
01:05:43More likely that we're going to go into Canada, Venezuela, or Ukraine.
01:05:46If China plays its cards right, Taiwan is going to fall right into China's lap.
01:05:51I've been, so President Chen brought me to Taiwan in January, 2003.
01:05:55I was one of five air power experts.
01:05:57This was the president of Taiwan.
01:05:59Okay.
01:06:00For a two day conference with the president of Taiwan.
01:06:02He wanted the answer to the question.
01:06:04This is January, 2003.
01:06:07What should Taiwan do if China preemptively attacks Taiwan?
01:06:12Well, the United States is preemptively attacking Iraq.
01:06:15So remember, we had this thing called the Iraq war.
01:06:18Well, for Taiwan, that was a very scary situation.
01:06:22So for two days, I was with the president and also with the top of the Air Force.
01:06:27And we were discussing the no kidding discussions here.
01:06:31And I also got windows into their national security.
01:06:34And I got the polls.
01:06:35That is the internal polls, which there was nothing classified inside.
01:06:39No NDA.
01:06:40So I'm not revealing anything that I'm not supposed to be.
01:06:43But I'm telling you that one of the absolute issues here with Taiwan is there's a large part
01:06:49of the population that sees growth over there.
01:06:53And they're happy to get some growth called Taipei 101.
01:06:56So there's a whole lot underneath this.
01:06:58Chris doesn't mean Taiwan is certain to, you know, sort of go in China's way.
01:07:05But what I've been arguing for some time is that if China just continues to grow,
01:07:10then what's going to happen is it will eventually dwarf Taiwan even more than it does today.
01:07:17And a lot of folks in Taiwan are going to want to make money in China.
01:07:21And you've already talked about that.
01:07:23What I want to do is not deny any of these things, but in perspective, take a look at a community
01:07:30like the United States, which is a community, common values, so on and so forth.
01:07:34Has there ever been deep divisions?
01:07:37How did we handle them?
01:07:39So when we take a look at, for example, immigration, right from the beginning of the founding,
01:07:44there's a dread of migrants.
01:07:48The Scotch-Irish that came here were marginalized profoundly and so on and so forth.
01:07:55Along with these evolutions of immigration and so on and so forth, which we were built on, we needed,
01:08:03okay, there's also tension between those who wanted it and didn't want it.
01:08:09The businessmen wanted cheap labor.
01:08:12The others didn't want it.
01:08:13The workers didn't want it.
01:08:16So we have to enter these from my point of view, and I agree with you absolutely on what's coming.
01:08:24I simply have a different sense of proportionality.
01:08:28That it's not as profoundly serious as we who've never experienced it before would want to make it be.
01:08:35There's precedent for it.
01:08:36There is a manner in which the Americans have historically gone through this.
01:08:40My pointing to the Civil War was simply the most extreme
01:08:44situation that even that we recovered from.
01:08:46When was the last time that you saw something you would say was unprecedented?
01:08:50Internally in America, I see a long line of continuum, including the tensions and everything else.
01:08:58But eventually, you break, you're using so much artistic license to say,
01:09:03well, you know, this thing has been, it's analogous to something that's occurred before.
01:09:07Is there a time, like, I'm trying to work out when that's not, that cycle hasn't repeated?
01:09:11Well, my point is, before I say this is catastrophic, unprecedented, and so on,
01:09:19I have to look back.
01:09:20Most stable countries go through vast cycles, periods of economic,
01:09:27social unrest.
01:09:29So it's not a smooth flying anywhere, not even in Iceland.
01:09:34Do you think it's perfectly normal for a United States president to invade a country
01:09:38with no reason, with no strategy, with no plan at all to win the war?
01:09:44I will say, let me see in three months what happens.
01:09:49First of all, there was a reason.
01:09:52What was the reason?
01:09:52What was the reason?
01:09:55Basically, he keeps going after nuclear material.
01:10:00Why?
01:10:01Because I was on staff at times after 9/11, doing scenarios.
01:10:07What is the worst case scenario?
01:10:09And it was a nuclear country like Iran getting nuclear weapons,
01:10:14putting them on board a French ship, and sailing to New York Harbor.
01:10:19At this point, we've had very few casualties on the American side.
01:10:24And two days ago, a commander of the IRGC, a very senior commander, stood up and said,
01:10:32we've got to stop this war.
01:10:34The people are suffering and everything else.
01:10:37All I'm saying about this war is, when you're in the middle of it, it's extraordinary.
01:10:42On the other hand, we see, one, it's been a very short one.
01:10:46There's been, on the American side, very small losses.
01:10:52You're seeing evolutions in Iran with very different outcomes.
01:11:00So I simply say, okay, step back from this extraordinary event
01:11:05and ask the questions and then ask, is it really extraordinary?
01:11:09So if the reason was a nuclear weapon, why assassinate it?
01:11:13Why assassinate, on the first day, the Alatola?
01:11:16Who, who, how do we just fight what against nuclear weapons?
01:11:19The answer was, because he wouldn't, his president wouldn't listen to intelligence.
01:11:26The head of counter-terrorism resigned, saying that he will not allow me into his office.
01:11:33He's listening to Israelis.
01:11:36And presidents make massive mistakes.
01:11:38He confused the people there as the government of Iran.
01:11:44He confused them, killed them.
01:11:46That's not the government of Iran, it's the IRGC.
01:11:50On the other hand, it's very important to say, this war has lasted a few months, okay?
01:11:56We are far from understanding how it will end, but that it will end is certain, and so on.
01:12:03So when I take a look at this, yeah, he did a very stupid thing.
01:12:08He, profoundly, he's not the first president to do some very stupid things.
01:12:13The only thing I'm saying is that we tend to overreact to things
01:12:19when we don't put them in context.
01:12:21How big of a deal is the Iran war?
01:12:23Well, oh, it is the biggest deal since going up against Germany in World War II.
01:12:29So Iran is the most difficult challenge we've had since Germany in World War II.
01:12:34So let me give a different window into this.
01:12:36So I've been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years.
01:12:39And in the modeling of the bombing of Iran, I started to do this in 2005.
01:12:45And here's where I partly agree with George.
01:12:47I do this in 2005 because once it is known that Iran is enriching uranium,
01:12:53that's when the military planning of going against Iran really jacks up.
01:12:58And I know, because I was teaching for the Air Force in the '90s.
01:13:01I had a lot of experience.
01:13:02So from '79 to about 2002, we have political tensions.
01:13:07Yes, we occasionally do a war game.
01:13:08But after 2002 and 2003, things get much more serious.
01:13:12I start to model the bombing of Iran in 2005.
01:13:16And I did it every year for 20 years.
01:13:18I did this in my classes at the University of Chicago.
01:13:21And what I'm doing, I lay out the target set.
01:13:24I lay out what there's all changes.
01:13:26Of course, the target set changes.
01:13:28Fordow comes on.
01:13:29We get the Moab.
01:13:31So we get the different technology changes and so forth.
01:13:35But the big thing that the modeling always showed is that once we, meaning America,
01:13:44bombed the Fordow facility, which only we could do because the Israelis didn't have
01:13:50the large precision ordinance to be able to do it.
01:13:53Once we did that, we would be 90% likely to destroy the centrifuge industrial,
01:14:01the enrichment capability of the facility of Fordow.
01:14:06But we would have virtually no knowledge of whether we destroyed the 60% enriched uranium,
01:14:12the actual fizzle material.
01:14:14And that's critical, Chris, because building a bomb is a piece of cake.
01:14:19Once you have the enriched material, most people don't know that.
01:14:23I also teach my students how to build a bomb.
01:14:25So, so like take them through the soup to nuts.
01:14:27So they really understand it's the fizzle material and then the modeling.
01:14:32And this is what I told my class.
01:14:33And I have the slides and so, and so forth.
01:14:35And I put them on my sub stack.
01:14:37And I said, then what would happen is if we bomb Fordow,
01:14:41then a year or two later, we would do regime change bombing.
01:14:45Not just come back and bomb in general.
01:14:47We would literally do regime change bombing.
01:14:50And why would you do regime change bombing back to your question?
01:14:53Kind of link and connect all the dots.
01:14:56It's because you would become, once you bomb Fordow,
01:15:00you couldn't track for it with high confidence,
01:15:03the dispersal of that fizzle material.
01:15:06And we know we have civilian satellites showing that a couple days before we
01:15:11bombed Fordow, stuff's coming out of Fordow.
01:15:14We have civilian satellites showing that Estefan, another site in February of this year,
01:15:19a month before we do the bombing, Iran is digging stuff out.
01:15:23We think that maybe they moved the stuff from Fordow to Estefan and now they're digging it out.
01:15:28So this issue of a nuclear weapon, I think is really quite serious.
01:15:34Now, Israel, I think is playing a role, but I, in my mind, I think it's secondary
01:15:39because they have been arguing to do this for every year, for 20 years.
01:15:43What makes the difference here, I believe,
01:15:46was the concern that we couldn't track the fizzle material.
01:15:50And that's still going on to this day.
01:15:54That's why we're worried about pickaxe mountain, very specific.
01:15:58So what all that means, Chris, is we're in an escalation trap.
01:16:03The trap didn't just start with killing the leader on February 28.
01:16:07It starts with the bombing of Fordow.
01:16:10And that's the stages I published literally several days before we killed the leader.
01:16:16I escalation trap, I laid out the stages of what would come, would kill the leader.
01:16:20Is it following your predictive game plan thus far?
01:16:23Yes. And that's what's so scary about this.
01:16:25And what I'm really concerned about is we are coming now to a serious stage
01:16:31of the escalation trap that's going to start next week and the following week.
01:16:36So I've been laying out on my substack, the escalation trap,
01:16:41the nightmare scenario for how this is going to escalate to get worse.
01:16:46And that nightmare scenario, which I started laying out in July, was the rise of gas prices in the United
01:16:53States. Well, I don't know if you've been tracking it, but in Chicago, they're going up.
01:16:58And what that is doing and what this is doing is it creates the opportunity for Iran to really close and
01:17:06try to shut down Hormuz. Why? So that they can try to damage Trump politically in the midterms to irrevocably
01:17:15destroy his presidency. And what did I say that was going to do? That was going to energize the Trump
01:17:22administration to start fighting back. And what are we going to see literally tomorrow with Scott Besson
01:17:29Trump? Is D-Day. OK, now it's an economic D-Day, but that economic D-Day is the Iran's already talking
01:17:37about further escalation here. If Iran escalates, are we really just going to sit back and say, oh,
01:17:43sure, we're going to know there's a real danger. We're in the spiral phase of the escalation trap.
01:17:50As those gas prices went up, this created a window of maximum leverage for Iran. They're using that
01:17:57maximum leverage to wreck Trump's presidency for the midterms. And I think that what President Trump
01:18:05is doing is trying to figure a way to, it's not just how to deal with Iran now, it's what does he do to
01:18:12show he is going to do something as Iran is really doing great damage to our economy and his presidency.
01:18:20We're seeing the collapse of the global economy because for the past 30, 40 years, there's a very simple
01:18:26deal that governed the world, which is that the United States would provide protection to the GCC
01:18:32and to Japan. And in return, Japan and the GCC would buy US treasuries. And that was a deal that made the
01:18:39American economy so vibrant. The GCC now has been destroyed by this war. And because Japan gets most
01:18:45of its oil from the GCC, the Japanese yen is weakening, which means that these two regions of the world that
01:18:54provided most of the world's liquidity, especially in the United States, they can no longer do so. So
01:18:58what Scott Besson is worried about is the GCC and Japan can't buy US treasuries. And so what that
01:19:08means is the United States cannot refinance its $4,200 debt. This is the apocalypse. This is a catastrophe.
01:19:16This is not as a short war. We should also take a look at the other side, what Iran is experiencing,
01:19:21what is happening in Iran. This is not simply the United States. There's a significant split happening
01:19:29in Iran. A speech the other day made by a major leader said, "Look, our people are starving. We cannot
01:19:36continue this war." Okay? The Artesh is there, which is the secular army. So in other words,
01:19:43look at this war not just from our side and the consequences to us. See the paint on the other
01:19:49side. Okay? So we assume that the RGC is super powerful, can continue to do anything it wants,
01:19:56has no resistance. We forget that there was about 20,000 people killed in an uprising before the war.
01:20:04Okay? That division is not gone. Iran has been under section for the past 50 years. It's a poor
01:20:11place. People are used to being poor. Are Americans going to put up with $10 gallon gas prices?
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01:21:12So for 30 years, I've been studying air power, economic sanctions, blockades. I've focused on
01:21:25American political violence. So again, it's the intersection of these military action and politics.
01:21:31One thing that's very important to know in advance of what Scott Besson is about to tell us is since
01:21:38World War I, not going back before World War I, since World War I, even heavy economic pressure alone,
01:21:48I mean alone without other military force, has never won a major war. Never won a major war. All I want,
01:21:57and there's going to be a big substack tomorrow as I put this out. All I want is I want the reporters
01:22:04at that news conference to ask a very simple question. So the British blockade on Germany in
01:22:10World War I did not defeat Germany, even though it killed over 700,000 German civilians. And we still
01:22:18had to have ground power to end that conflict. So the economic sanctions on Japan before World War I
01:22:25and then during World War II and then during World War II itself did not stop us from bombing its cities
01:22:32using the atomic bomb and then also Russian entry into the war with ground forces. That's how we defeated
01:22:39Japan. If we look at Iraq from 1990 to 2003, it was our American military that kicked Sodom out of Kuwait.
01:22:48And once Saddam was out of Kuwait from 91 to 2003, we had sanctions that crushed the Iraqi economy by
01:22:5550% each year for all those years. And what did we have to do? 150,000. You see, you get my point.
01:23:03Every time you speak, I feel like I'm treading on eggshells. I'm like, I don't want to know what comes
01:23:07next. I don't want to know what comes next. Well, now you see what it was like when I taught for the
01:23:11Air Force. It's fucking awful. That's how they describe it, the prison of pain. He gets you in the
01:23:17data so you can't get out. So we see Iran as a completely united country, no factions and so on and
01:23:24so forth, okay? That's obviously an illusion because there are always factions and so on and so forth.
01:23:30So I'm not saying that it's economic force, but there were great divisions that we saw before.
01:23:37Those divisions are still there in some ways. So the question is not just the economic consequences,
01:23:45but also the fact that it's very rare to have a country that is totally united in this way.
01:23:52And this is not the country like that. So George, the external force is bringing those
01:23:56divisions closer together. They're not breaking them apart.
01:24:00I profoundly disagree. They can sometimes push them together. Sometimes I say, as we did in the Vietnam
01:24:07war. All I say is, what's the case since World War I? All I need is one case.
01:24:12One case. One case where our external pressure, our economic pressure, where we've had, and again,
01:24:19I just gave you four, we have another five. I just particularly said, and I'm meaning economic
01:24:24pressure. I'm just talking about the inherent differences within this vast country. Why does
01:24:32that matter? It matters because when the attacks start to happen and the pain starts to rise,
01:24:39they become more powerful in the sense that others look at them and say, you were right.
01:24:45This was not the government we should have.
01:24:47So, did they not already try and uprise before and that didn't work?
01:24:51Of course. No, they killed them all. Now under these circumstances.
01:24:55Is that going to stop?
01:24:57Well, this is the fundamental question. Okay.
01:25:00And all we need is a case, George. Just give us even a case of bombing. So let's widen it beyond military
01:25:06pressure. Where is the case that without ground forces, bombing alone wrecked the government?
01:25:13And the answer is that the question in my mind is not bombing. Okay. It is the disunity of the
01:25:22country itself, which we saw the weeks before the war began. Is your suggestion that if Iran had sufficient
01:25:29disunity inside that the government would choose to give up because it's got so much pressure happening
01:25:36internally? What I'm saying is the government itself, the statement that was made and was
01:25:42transmitted all over the world by this leader of the IRGC, a former head of the IRGC, that we must not
01:25:48continue this. So I'm saying that the, as in Vietnam, the government was, U.S. government was
01:25:56completely, frequently divided on what should be done.
01:25:59I, at least from what I know, a tiny amount I know about Iran, I don't get the sense that the
01:26:04government is going to be too concerned about the quality of life of its citizens to give over to
01:26:09what Trump's pressures are going to be. Am I right or wrong?
01:26:12All I have is one speech from the former president that was published. He is still alive, apparently.
01:26:18So when you take a look at a country, take a look at the fragments within our own country,
01:26:24and don't assume that this country is totally united or simply afraid of the regime. The regime
01:26:32itself is divided. We've seen it. Unless this speech that I saw and everything is translated
01:26:42was made up by somebody, this represented a significant thing. Now the Pakistani
01:26:50head of the military is coming to talk to the Iranians. He may already be there, okay?
01:26:57There has been talk this morning about Iran being allowed to become part of the entity that was created.
01:27:05In other words, wars don't end because of the bombings. I totally agree with you.
01:27:11They end through political processes sometimes within countries. You don't totally defeat them.
01:27:18But we have to be aware that these are human beings. They're not all fanatics that really die.
01:27:26Well, I think there's a difference between do we see all of the citizens of Iran as
01:27:33supporting a regime that we are concerned about that might be part of global terror or something like
01:27:39that. I don't think anybody's making that claim. I think the concern is, no matter what's going on
01:27:44internally, whether it's divided or cohesive, whether they're in support or against, the war is going on
01:27:52from the people at the top of Iran and the people at the top of America, regardless of what the people
01:27:56below them are. But somebody who is at top of Iran, this man, made this speech. But he's no longer in
01:28:03power, right? No, he's not in power. He's not in power, but he has tremendous influence.
01:28:09That's what, that's, look, here's the, since World War I, starts with Julio Duhay. He wrote a book,
01:28:15Command in the Air, mostly has to do with air power. There's been a hope with either economic blockades
01:28:21or air power, that air power or blockades without a ground force could incite a popular revolt to
01:28:28topple the government so that we wouldn't… We don't want to do it, you do it for us.
01:28:31Exactly. And this has been a hope and it hasn't happened.
01:28:35No one, I have not talked about toppling the government. I am saying that the government itself
01:28:41is split in various ways. The RGC is not totally unified. As we go into wars, we are not totally
01:28:51unified and sometimes disunification. You have to take a look at the internals.
01:28:55So one factor that we need to look at is that right now, the Iranians have chosen to adopt something
01:29:01called the Mosaic Defense, which is a decentralized command and control military warfare, which means
01:29:09that it's entirely possible no one is in charge of Iran right now. So it doesn't really matter what
01:29:17the people want. It doesn't really matter what the leadership wants because you have 31 commanders
01:29:22spread out all over the country. And as long as one of them wants to keep on fighting, they should
01:29:26have almost will remain closed and this war will continue. That's a problem.
01:29:31Sounds like decentralization, but it might just be leaderlessness in that way.
01:29:36It's… They run the government through consensus. We saw this with the Taliban in Afghanistan as well.
01:29:42So it's… There's different models for how you govern. Some are very rigid top-down. Gaddafi ran his
01:29:49government very rigid top-down. That's absolutely the case. Others are more very, very decentralized,
01:29:56fragmented almost. I don't think that's where Iran is. Iran is in this middle of consensus. And it's
01:30:02hard to see because this is where the Supreme Leader, when he made a statement… Remember the MOU?
01:30:08The Supreme Leader made a statement saying that he personally didn't agree with the MOU,
01:30:13but he was going to give it a chance and support those who did, which meant there was a division,
01:30:18just as George is saying. And that side of getting a negotiated outcome won on June 17th. That has now
01:30:27been replaced, I believe, by the other side, the Supreme Leader's side. And that's what you see with the
01:30:33replacement of the whole command structure of the IRGC in the last several weeks. It's all in one direction.
01:30:40The MOU was a major turning point, because before the MOU, I think George is right,
01:30:44there were these factions. And the MOU was a compromise. And what the Americans have shown is,
01:30:54for the reason they will not abide by the terms of the MOU. And so the Iranians at some point said,
01:31:02screw this, we are not going to negotiate, we are not going to compromise, we're going to fight this
01:31:06to the end. So now the Hufis have been brought into the war, and this war is expanding very rapidly.
01:31:11What do you think is the likely outcome of the Iran war?
01:31:14It doesn't end. What's going to happen is, eventually, the Ukraine war and the Iran will
01:31:20merge. Already we're seeing that after Zelensky bombed an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea.
01:31:27And Zelensky was very proud of this. You see, I can do this for the Americans. So it is very likely
01:31:34that all the world powers are brought in. China is brought into the war. Russia is brought into the war.
01:31:40It sounds a lot like the World War Three that we said wasn't going to happen at the top of this episode.
01:31:44Except it's not the world. I didn't say that. Did I say that?
01:31:49No, no. He actually thinks World War Three is kind of coming quickly.
01:31:54Here's where I would... So I see the trends that Zhang is saying. I don't want to disagree with the trends.
01:32:00I think January of this year is going to be a focal point moment.
01:32:05January of next year. Of next year. I mean, January, 2027 will be a focal point moment
01:32:10where all the actors in the United States, China, Iran have a chance to reset.
01:32:17Now, where they go, here's what I... But why January?
01:32:21Go back to what I just said, which is Iran has a strategy for the U.S. midterms.
01:32:26It sees the oil inventories running down. It sees its period of maximum pressure.
01:32:32The opportunity here is to destroy Trump's presidency politically.
01:32:39Not to knock him out of office, but so that he is the lamest of lame ducks.
01:32:44Well, will that happen or not? We'll know quite a bit in the first week in January.
01:32:50Now, we won't necessarily know 100%, but we'll know a lot of information.
01:32:55And I believe what's going to happen is once we get to the first week in January,
01:33:01everybody will be recalibrating for a post-Trump world now, or a future Trump world.
01:33:08How do you feel about this?
01:33:10Look, the problem is we're trying to see this from an economic lens.
01:33:14And the reason why the MOU fell apart is Israel refused to abide by the terms.
01:33:20One of the major terms of the MOU signed between the United States and Iran is that
01:33:25all terms, all peace terms that apply to Iran would also apply to Iran's allies,
01:33:31especially Hezbollah in Lebanon. And that required Israel to withdraw its forces
01:33:36from southern Lebanon. Israel refused to do so. And Israel has only accelerated its attacks on
01:33:43Hezbollah. So we think that it's entirely between the United States and Iran, but Israel
01:33:52has a lot of options. And right now, for the reason we can discuss this, Israel is choosing to
01:33:59escalate the war. And also, the Hufis have been brought in. And the thing about the Hufis is that
01:34:06they are religious fanatics. They are very poor people, they live in mountains, and they're not
01:34:11afraid to die. And right now, they're fighting this war against Saudi Arabia. So Saudi Arabia,
01:34:17Arabical facilities are being hit. The other strait in the Middle East, the Baal al-Mandad Strait,
01:34:24has been closed by the Hufis. So we're seeing this war escalate. And again, we're trying to see this
01:34:30from an economic lens. But if you look at what the Hufis are doing, if you look at what the IRDC
01:34:35and the Israelis are doing, I would say this is almost like a religious war. It's a crusade. It's an
01:34:39eschatological war.
01:34:40But there's another dimension we have to see. The alliance between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan.
01:34:51Now, if you take a look at a map, all around them, these countries, Saudi Arabia has no use for Iran.
01:35:00The Turks are seeking to evolve themselves into a major point, scaring the Israelis to death.
01:35:08And Pakistan itself is evolving dramatically in this war into a very sophisticated state.
01:35:15So when you take a look at the situation of Iran, let's not just talk about the bombing and everything,
01:35:20but the geopolitical development. Now, today there was a story, I don't know if it's true or not,
01:35:25that Iran is going to be asked to join this coalition. In other words, submit. Whether they do it or not,
01:35:31whether this is an actual offer, I have no idea, but it was there. But this created a new structure
01:35:39in the Middle East, this alliance, a very different one, with a very powerful country. Israel is terrified
01:35:48of Turkey, because they know they do.
01:35:52No, it's not. It just bombed.
01:35:54It just bombed the Turkish officials in Syria.
01:35:57Yes, and that was part of it, because this is a country they cannot defeat.
01:36:03They've only fought countries along their borders, and they were able for, since the founding of Israel,
01:36:11to hold those borders. The Turkish army is three times as large as the Israeli army.
01:36:20And while I don't believe that the Turks really have any desire to fight them,
01:36:26these Israeli, shall we say, societies built around
01:36:33a commitment to the belief that they're going to try to destroy us.
01:36:38There is a built-in paranoia. So, when this ends, you know, this problem ends a little bit,
01:36:46they bomb Syria. They then tell the American ambassador they didn't bomb Syria. Then they say,
01:36:56Turkey is our greatest fear. Built into Israel, by history, is a paranoia.
01:37:06Who is my greatest enemy? I have one. Now they're facing, for the first time,
01:37:12an enemy that they cannot, because of both geography and military capability.
01:37:18Defeat. All right?
01:37:20Now, when Runcet was asked what to do after the Battle of Bulgur, he said,
01:37:26Make peace, you fools.
01:37:28And this is the situation that Israel is in. It's an internal crisis.
01:37:32It has reached a point where its military capability is not enough.
01:37:37So, the reason I think the midterms are a decisive threshold, not just a minor threshold,
01:37:45is it will determine whether the Democrats control Congress. If the Democrats control Congress,
01:37:52which is still an if, but we'll know in January, there is going to be two things that are going to happen.
01:37:58And we see this in the democratic policies already.
01:38:02Number one is, there'll be tremendous pressure to literally end the Iran War.
01:38:07So, we saw this in 1974 by Congress. Congress has not played much of a role in foreign policy.
01:38:12The last time it got involved was '74 with Vietnam to truly constrain the executive.
01:38:18There'll be a battle about this, of course, but number one is the Democrats wanting to shut down
01:38:23this. And that would stop it from becoming a forever war.
01:38:26One more point and then I'll let you. The second point is, they're going to want to constrain Israel.
01:38:32There's a huge push in the Democratic Party to shut down all of the, look at all the Democrats that are,
01:38:40that were pro-Israel that are losing. And they're losing because there's a huge movement inside of the
01:38:48Democratic Party to zero out the budgets to Israel. And that means that come January,
01:38:57Israel's going to have to calibrate Iran. Others are going to calibrate based on the results of whether
01:39:03the Democrats control Congress. Now, we don't know whether the Democrats will control Congress.
01:39:08But what I'm saying is, it's too soon to truly project out beyond January. Because come January, we'll
01:39:15know. Are we in a forever war or not? And by the way, if the Democrats, even though they control Congress,
01:39:21support the war, oh yeah, we're in a forever war.
01:39:24So which major Democratic leader has come out against the Warrens? And which leader has said,
01:39:30we must end this war right now? Which, which leader?
01:39:34Oh geez, almost all of them. I mean, just watch CNN. They come on all the time. So what they are,
01:39:39if you, if you listen, Zhang, to the Democrat, no, well, if you listen to the Democratic leaders,
01:39:44this has just been a mantra to end the Vietnam war, I'm sorry, to end the Iran war. And the real
01:39:52question is going to be, Zhang, whether or not once they control, will they take responsibility for that?
01:39:59Because right now it's easy to run against the Iran war because gas prices going up, you know,
01:40:07bad mistakes by the, the Trump administration, which they hate, they hate anyway. Where it will
01:40:12become difficult will be once the Democrats assume power, because if it turns out that the Democrats
01:40:21stopped the war and Iran gets a nuclear weapon, think about that for the Democratic Party. That could bring
01:40:27the Republicans right back in, in 2028. So I think these are the real issues. And that's why it's about
01:40:34not just what you claim you're going to do, but what you do when you're in power.
01:40:38So, so I, I must've missed the news, but can you name me one major Democratic leader, whether it's
01:40:42Chuck Schumer? Well, Hakeem Jeffries was just on CNN,
01:40:45I think it was three days ago, arguing that the war should end now. Um, I just listened to the woman who
01:40:51just ran, um, the progressive who just won, uh, the Senate, uh, for the Senate seat in the primary here on
01:40:57Ford. I was just on a, um, a podcast with her on, uh, the joy read show just two days ago, uh, talking
01:41:03about this issue. And she was hugely, uh, uh, against the, uh, against the war and, and thought
01:41:09it was a total mistake and it should end. So, I mean, those are at least two people right there.
01:41:14So, so did Hakeem Jeffries say that if the Democrats were to win the house in November,
01:41:20they would immediately try to restrict Trump's war powers and try to, I haven't said anybody has
01:41:26gone that far. That's the next step. That's the real issue here. And that's what I'm saying is you
01:41:33won't be able to know whether they'll do it until they're in power, Zhang. And if they're in power and
01:41:39they support the war for fear that they will lose their political viability as Hillary Clinton was
01:41:45worried about with the Iraq war, then this will, that's how you got a forever war. You get both
01:41:50parties in favor of the war because neither one will stop it. Now you have a forever war.
01:41:55But in this particular case, both the Republicans opposed the war because that's one of the bases on
01:42:03which he won the election was not to get into these forever wars. The Democrats also are doing it. When
01:42:10you take a look at the poll numbers on this war, they're enormously unpopular. Congress tends to do
01:42:17what's popular and ending the war is popular, not only in the Democrats, but with the Republicans. This is the
01:42:25fundamental difference that I've never seen, which is that his own party feels betrayed. So I think
01:42:31there's one of the things I think the Iranians are saying, let's wait, let's wait to see if they come
01:42:38apart. The same way I'm talking about Iran having internal problems, we have enormous internal problems.
01:42:45I'm seeing the Iranians trying to put this off as long as possible and then try to make a deal
01:42:53in September or October before the election.
01:42:57It's so fascinating that Trump's
01:43:02positioning and his desire to be seen as a competent president and obviously the last couple of years
01:43:08of his legacy, that is being used as a geopolitical tool. That's almost a weapon that other people can
01:43:16insert themselves into because they know that this is going to be a point of weakness or it's a point of
01:43:22leverage that can be used to play with the incentives that the U.S. has got. Do they want to push further?
01:43:30Do they want to pull back?
01:43:30Do they want to pull back? This is something I've seen in, again, advise four White Houses, 2001 to 24, two Democrat, two Republican.
01:43:39Legacy matters to, let's call it the White House, if not the president. I also think the president, but let's just make it that legacy is
01:43:49beyond just getting the next win. Legacy is what you're remembered for. And I think this is what
01:43:57is important that we miss when we talk about presidents in the United States. We think, well,
01:44:02you can't run for reelection again. Therefore, you don't care anymore about anything. No, I think what
01:44:09they, what I see is even in their first term, they're thinking about their legacy going forward. And that
01:44:17legacy, there have only been 47 presidents in our history. This, there's not that many presidents.
01:44:24Not a big sample size.
01:44:25So I really, well, it's not that it's that they know they're one of 47 or 48. It's the other way
01:44:31around, Chris. It's because it's a tiny club. Their legacy is going to be with them after they're dead
01:44:37for a hundred years plus.
01:44:39But if he's still worried about his legacy, why did he attack Iran in the first place?
01:44:44I think again, back to the modeling. I'm just going to keep going back to the modeling because I,
01:44:49I made a prediction to my classes for 20 years in a row that once we bomb Fordow,
01:44:57but why we would panic about Iran getting a nuclear weapon in a way we couldn't see.
01:45:03And we would get Intel, whether it's Israel or somebody else that was showing us they were getting
01:45:09intelligence and we would try to resolve it through regime change. Not because regime change was
01:45:15magically thought to be a better strategy, but it was really the only way you could come up with even a
01:45:21half plausible idea.
01:45:23Was there a question about why to do the bombing in the first place though?
01:45:25Yeah. So, so, so I wouldn't take a step back from it.
01:45:27Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I want to present another theory. Okay. Besides your modeling.
01:45:31No, please.
01:45:32Well, so 1996, um, is a clean break memo.
01:45:35Yes.
01:45:36Right. And you, you probably know the people who wrote that, right?
01:45:38Richard Perl, Paul Wolf was from my department.
01:45:42Okay. All right.
01:45:4371 PhD University of Chicago.
01:45:45So I know these people pretty well.
01:45:46So, so just from, from, for some context.
01:45:48For the idiot in the room. Thank you.
01:45:49Yeah. The clean break memo was, uh, a proposal to Benjamin Netanyahu.
01:45:54And the argument is that, that Israel, um, under Netanyahu should withdraw from the peace law,
01:46:01from the, sorry, from the Oslo peace accords, because, um, in order to assure peace in the Middle East,
01:46:08Israel had to be strong, it had, it had to conduct regime change in Iraq and Syria.
01:46:15Also, um, Israel needed to be self-sufficient economically and militarily.
01:46:19It needed to basically stop being dependent on the United States.
01:46:22You know, if you want to resolve the Palestinian issue, then you beat the crap out of them.
01:46:26Rather than try to compromise and give them land, that would just make them more greedy.
01:46:30Instead, you, um, you, uh, establish peaceful strength, though.
01:46:35That, those are the exact terms, peaceful strength.
01:46:37Okay. So that's the 1996 clean break memo.
01:46:40Why that's important is if you look at the clean break memo and look at today,
01:46:44they basically implement every single point of the clean break memo, right?
01:46:48Every single point. That's number one.
01:46:50Number two is what's interesting is the people responsible for the clean break memo,
01:46:54Bridget Pearl, um, that was five, went on to work in the Bush administration.
01:47:00And they were along with Paul Wolf, which is your friend, the architect.
01:47:02No, not a friend.
01:47:03Okay, sorry.
01:47:04No, no, no, no. That's going too far.
01:47:05But the three of them, okay?
01:47:06The three of them in the Pentagon were the architects of the Iraq war, right?
01:47:12And then, uh, after 9/11, Wesley Clark appears on stage with Amy Goodman.
01:47:18And, uh, Amy Goodman, Amy Goodman is like, what's the plan?
01:47:22And Wesley Clark is like, we're going to go after seven nations in five years.
01:47:25And these seven nations include Iraq, uh, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, uh, Sudan, Somalia.
01:47:34And there's one more, Iran.
01:47:36So if I'm just looking at it from like a, like top down, um, bird's eye view,
01:47:43I would say that this was, was always a plan, um, ever since 1986, a clean break memo to attack
01:47:50Iran eventually, because they've been saying this for the past, uh, 30 years.
01:47:55And so it's not a good reason to attack Iran.
01:48:00So that was always the plan.
01:48:02So let me, first of all, number one, I, I agree with your characterization of the Korean boy.
01:48:06Green break plan.
01:48:07Number two, I agree.
01:48:08It was a plan.
01:48:09Um, what I see from 2005 on, um, and I, uh, was working with the, uh, Bush administration
01:48:17about how to essentially calm down the Iraq war.
01:48:20So I had many, many interactions here with the Bush administration, because, um, I was warning
01:48:25before we did Iraq that we would touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times.
01:48:30Uh, we did invade Iraq.
01:48:31We did touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times.
01:48:35And who started my center at the university of Chicago, the Chicago project used to be on suicide
01:48:41terrorism.
01:48:42It was actually the Bush administration.
01:48:44Think about that for a moment, because suddenly somebody made a unique prediction.
01:48:49None of the other terrorism expert was predicting that.
01:48:52And I gave it directly to Paul Wolfowitz here.
01:48:55He was did Iraq.
01:48:56Anyway, it touched it off anyway.
01:48:59And so now suddenly I'm engaging with, uh, with them.
01:49:03Um, we never put an army in a certain African country.
01:49:06Think Somalia.
01:49:07That was a possibility.
01:49:09That did not happen.
01:49:10Certain things that did not happen also are important to know.
01:49:14So one of the things that happened during this period, after the, um, uh, this Iraq war
01:49:20became a disaster is all that influence, but Wolfowitz left, uh, five left, um, Pearl left.
01:49:28And it's because it became widely understood what the real dangers were of going into Iran much.
01:49:36I mean, Iraq was already a problem, but Iran is a much bigger.
01:49:40I said the biggest challenge since Germany and world war two, this was widely understood at the time.
01:49:47And it's widely understood by, uh, the military.
01:49:50It's widely understood in both white, uh, Democrat and Republican white houses.
01:49:55This is not a unique situation here.
01:49:59Um, I think you really run into, um, an issue with why did president Trump bomb for dough?
01:50:06So I've talked to the people from the administration who have left in detail about this.
01:50:10And, uh, in May, I think you have to understand one thing, which is, although, um, president
01:50:18Trump decided to reject Netanyahu in his first administration, president Trump has become
01:50:24his own national security advisor, his own secretary of defense, his own secretary of state.
01:50:30If you look at all the decisions that are happening, everybody else is essentially executing his
01:50:37policies and occasionally he'll get mad at them and blame them for something.
01:50:41But he's not really following closely the advice of any of those people around him.
01:50:49I think what's happening is that, um, our president, our system.
01:50:54gives the president in ordinate discretion when it comes to the use of force.
01:51:01You're saying that this was a personal bias and a whim.
01:51:04I think it was, um, uh, yes, largely so.
01:51:06But I would say it's because I would say that what you're seeing here is that this style of president,
01:51:14what, what it doesn't matter if, if he fires Pete Hegseth next week, or he fires Scott
01:51:19Besant next week, do we really think the style of the president is going to change?
01:51:25I think that we need to understand that we are our system of government.
01:51:29We have, uh, given inordinate power to the president.
01:51:33I'm not calling for a change of the constitution, but I am saying that that means if the president
01:51:39wakes up one day and wants to press the button, and by the way, Abraham, there's famous Abraham
01:51:44Lincoln, a famous story in, uh, Doris Korn Goodwin's of a team of rivals where Abraham
01:51:49Lincoln goes around the table, asks the entire cabinet and, and they all say, no, no, no, no, no.
01:51:54And they come to the, and clink and, and Lincoln says, I, and gentlemen, the eyes have it.
01:52:00So this is what happened.
01:52:01What does Trump have against Iran?
01:52:04He can't even find Iran on a map.
01:52:07I mean, he can't.
01:52:09I guarantee you he cannot do it.
01:52:10Well, look, I think we've pushed, we, I, I like to talk to people directly.
01:52:16I've never, in this case, um, everybody I've talked to who's been around this,
01:52:22who've actually briefed the president on this.
01:52:25They only go so far in willing to say why he did certain things.
01:52:29And I'm saying it's because of the way he has chosen to make his decisions.
01:52:35There's not the process we're used to seeing here.
01:52:38So what that would mean is, and I've never talked to president Trump is unless I could actually
01:52:43talk to Trump, I won't go further than I've currently said, because I do think that this
01:52:48is though, how we got here.
01:52:50And once he did Fordow, I don't know that at all, he understood the consequences,
01:52:55but I think then he was sunk, Zhang, because once he did that and he sees
01:53:00the satellite imagery I'm seeing in the civilian world.
01:53:03And there's probably more he, he knows if they develop, if they test nukes on his watch,
01:53:08man, he sunk for all of his.
01:53:09Zhang, what's your psychoanalysis?
01:53:11So, so let's just look at his pattern of behavior in his, both his first term
01:53:16and the second term, right?
01:53:17First time he comes to office, he, he, he cancels the JCPOA, which is the Iran nuclear
01:53:23deal under Obama, right?
01:53:25He's like, we're not doing this anymore, guys.
01:53:26That's number one, then he recognizes, sorry, then what he does is he transfers the American
01:53:34embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is one of the most provocative acts an American
01:53:40president has ever done in the Middle East.
01:53:41You don't, you don't do that.
01:53:42Okay.
01:53:43That's number two.
01:53:44Number three is he recognizes Israel's control of the Golden Heights.
01:53:47Then the most dramatic thing he does is in January 2020, he orders the assassination of
01:53:54General Qasem Soleimani, who was Iran's de facto ambassador in the Middle East.
01:53:59So Fordow, this seemed a logical extension of his actions.
01:54:04He is the most pro-Israel president the United States has ever had, right?
01:54:09It seems like if you just look at the clean brick memo of 1996 and you look at what, what Trump is
01:54:14doing in, um, in the Middle East, it seems like he is trying to create the greater Israel project.
01:54:21Sorry, do you know what the greater Israel project is?
01:54:23Um, right.
01:54:24So the greater Israel project is, um, the idea that, um, Israel should occupy all biblical
01:54:33lands or the lands that Yahweh God promised to Abraham.
01:54:37And these lands, um, extend from Egypt, sorry, extend from the Nile in Egypt, all the way to
01:54:43Euphrates in Iraq.
01:54:45So if you look at the entire map of what the United States has been doing for the past 20 years, attacking Iraq, Libya, Syria, um, and now this war, which promised to engulf, um, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, it seems like this is all to achieve the greater Israel project.
01:55:06I, I believe, but if he was only interested in Israel, why Venezuela, why Greenland, why Canada?
01:55:15Well, you gotta have something to do on the weekend.
01:55:17Well, what I'm just, what I'm pointing out, what I'm pointing, so I agree with you.
01:55:21That's the second most important reason Israel.
01:55:23I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all.
01:55:25I think that what we need to see is, um, that first of all, President Trump is really, um, enthralled with the use of violence.
01:55:33Enthralled with the use of violence.
01:55:35He's part and parcel of violent populism.
01:55:37He's both a cause and a symptom of it at the same time.
01:55:41And it's not just.
01:55:42In his first term, he did not start a war.
01:55:44Well, he kept his promise.
01:55:45I will not start a new war.
01:55:46And violent, and after January 6th, I think, uh, the process leading up to January 6th.
01:55:53And then in chapter five of the book, I track, I trace this out.
01:55:56That in aftermath of January 6th, this has radicalized MAGA.
01:56:01MAGA is not the same, uh, sort of group political movement.
01:56:05We're talking about international policy, not just internal culture.
01:56:07Yes.
01:56:08But once you have norm, once political violence is normal for you at home, it's a lot easier to use it abroad.
01:56:14He was in office from way before.
01:56:16Well, what I'm trying to tell you is that it, it, there's a, there's a trajectory that's emerging.
01:56:20It's not that he comes in planning on, you know, 2017 to do January 6th.
01:56:25There is a trajectory that emerges.
01:56:28And I think that we're, we need to see that, yes, Israel's playing a role,
01:56:32but there's a lot more that he is doing.
01:56:35Do you think the number one reason is this escalating acceptance?
01:56:39Normalization of political violence.
01:56:40It is the thing that is underneath him.
01:56:43But there's something else to look at.
01:56:45I think there is also in Trump, a fear of a 9/11 and there's in ways it should be.
01:56:54Okay.
01:56:55So when you take a look at Iran and their relationship with Al Qaeda ruined, but still there,
01:57:04something comes to mind at times, which is what would happen if instead of 9/11 happening with aircraft,
01:57:10a ship sailed in with a nuclear weapon to New York Harbor and detonated.
01:57:16So given the ideology of Iran, given the fact that they have nuclear materials
01:57:23and so, and the presence of Al Qaeda, we can say, we can say all the various things we say about
01:57:29Trump in various ways.
01:57:30And I agree with much of them.
01:57:32There's also a rational fear that can evolve.
01:57:36This is why his fundamental demand has been the nuclear weapons.
01:57:41Now, he attacked them first.
01:57:43He claimed it succeeded.
01:57:45It failed.
01:57:46Okay.
01:57:47And we really don't know, I think for sure, where the nuclear capabilities are.
01:57:53We don't know how to destroy them.
01:57:54And we're looking at that.
01:57:57But I think that underneath it, if you take a look at the question of what happens if there's a nuclear
01:58:03weapon, especially the secret one developed in Iran, given the ideology, what might happen?
01:58:11And I think in many ways, when you look at, you know, how we will be viewed in history,
01:58:20from that, if that were allowed to happen under his watch, we'd be also driving him.
01:58:26Do you think the JCPOA was working?
01:58:30It didn't fail.
01:58:32What it was working is another matter.
01:58:35The fundamental thing was to denuclearize these areas.
01:58:40So if Trump is most concerned about Iran developing a nuclear weapon, why did he withdraw from the JCPOA?
01:58:48Because he wanted more control, I think.
01:58:51I have no idea what has been through his mind.
01:58:54He wanted to have direct American control on that.
01:58:57He thought that would be more effective.
01:58:59When you take a look at his practices, okay?
01:59:02He clearly doesn't go through lying systems.
01:59:04He doesn't want to have dependence on others.
01:59:08He wants that power in his own hand.
01:59:09He can't have it.
01:59:11He does it as well.
01:59:13I don't, I can't psychoanalyze him.
01:59:15But what I see happening is that, and this is something I wrote out and spoke about that,
01:59:22the fundamental fear was the nuclear 9/11.
01:59:26And he keeps coming back to that.
01:59:27So if he was, if you were afraid of a nuclear weapon,
01:59:30he should have avoided three things, okay?
01:59:33One is withdraw from the JCPOA.
01:59:34Second is, do not assassinate the Aleppo Kemenai because he refused to ever use a nuclear weapon.
01:59:42And number three is, do not attack Iran.
01:59:44And Trump did all three things.
01:59:46Yes, but that doesn't mean that the operational action didn't have a certain end in mind.
01:59:53So in other words, it was rational to be concerned about it.
01:59:58He proceeded irrationally in action.
02:00:00Yes, and I think the choice set is interesting here.
02:00:04So I agree, by the way, with George, that there's a rational fear of a nuclear weapon with Iran.
02:00:11There is an element of a rational fear of that.
02:00:14I think we could learn to live with it, by the way.
02:00:16So I don't think it means that once you're concerned about an Iranian nuclear weapon,
02:00:21the solution is the force direction.
02:00:24And I certainly agree with that.
02:00:25But yeah, I thought you might.
02:00:27But let me say that what we saw with the JCPOA was not just that Trump ripped up the JCPOA,
02:00:33but he replaced it with a maximum pressure campaign.
02:00:36So what President Trump has done very often in his career, and this is what I would say is,
02:00:41and this is before January 6th, but there's a trajectory here, which is he is more and more
02:00:47comfortable with force domestically and internationally as he goes through his two presidencies.
02:00:57And that's what I mean by the normalization of it.
02:01:00It becomes more normal because he didn't just rip it up, the JCPOA.
02:01:06He thought a pressure campaign would be better.
02:01:10And I think that he learned from that failure, because it didn't stop Iran,
02:01:15that he should have more pressure.
02:01:17A lot of others of us would say you should learn from that by seeing that
02:01:21the pressure campaign is making things worse.
02:01:24And I think that this is what we're seeing with our president.
02:01:27He finds a lot of comfort in the use of political violence.
02:01:32He also doesn't really understand power.
02:01:37He overestimates what he has.
02:01:39He went into that war expecting it to be readily done.
02:01:43He did not understand the mosaic system.
02:01:46He did not care about responses.
02:01:49So one of the problems to have, I don't necessarily disagree with pressure as a measure.
02:01:56He doesn't understand how to apply the pressure, nor does he have a clear understanding
02:02:03of just how much power he has.
02:02:05My question is, if this is complete chaos, if this is just one guy behaving irrationally,
02:02:10why are all events helping to create the Greater Israel Project?
02:02:15That's my question.
02:02:16Well, and my challenge to you is that, explain the Western Hemisphere.
02:02:19Because if you really want to build the Greater Israel Project, and you look out here over time,
02:02:27what you would like is, you'd like President Trump completely focused on the Middle East.
02:02:32And yet, President Trump starts out with his tariffs, which is not quite violent,
02:02:37but again, very aggressive against our own allies.
02:02:40Then he moves to actual military ideas with Greenland and our allies, Canada.
02:02:46And so what he's doing, Zhang, is it's not that I just, again, I want to be very clear.
02:02:51I think that Israel is the second most important driver here.
02:02:55This is where I just, I think also with the 2003 Iraq War,
02:03:01some of the people I most respect in the world believe the number one reason we did the Iraq War
02:03:06in 2003 was Israel.
02:03:09I think it's what happened after 9/11.
02:03:12I think 9/11 created enormous fear of Muslims in the United States,
02:03:16including the people at the very top.
02:03:20It wasn't only Israel.
02:03:21Right.
02:03:21So one thing that people don't appreciate about the Greater Israel Project is,
02:03:26the major impediment to that thing is actually the U.S. military.
02:03:31Because the U.S. military provides balance of power in the Middle East.
02:03:35The U.S. military provides protection to the GCC.
02:03:39So if Israel were to become the dominant nation, it would need a way to remove the United States
02:03:45from the equation, right?
02:03:46And this Iran War, it is a solution to this problem.
02:03:51Because if the Americans stand in ground troops, which is part of the escalation trap,
02:03:55Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:03:56Then the United States would probably lose this war,
02:04:00and the United States would be forced to withdraw back into the Western Hemisphere.
02:04:03Hang on.
02:04:03Are you saying that Israel managed to convince Trump to go into Iran
02:04:08to do the bomb, which then gets into the escalation trap,
02:04:11which means that you need to put boots on the ground,
02:04:13which means that America ultimately loses,
02:04:15which means that America then has to withdraw to make room for Israel?
02:04:18I do not know if this was intentional.
02:04:21I don't know if this is a plan, but it's turning out this way.
02:04:25But if you're right, John, if you're right then,
02:04:28and I did a piece on my Professor Pape substack on this,
02:04:32what will happen if America truly, truly withdraws is a much smaller
02:04:38Israel?
02:04:38I think it really, yeah.
02:04:39It becomes a nuclear Sparta.
02:04:41It doesn't quite get wiped off the map, but a much smaller.
02:04:42You have to understand how weak Israel is.
02:04:44Yeah, Israel is much weaker.
02:04:46What if Israel took over CENTCOM?
02:04:50What if all of America's military apparatus, okay, the planes, the troops,
02:04:55all then became under the control of Israel, which is happening right now, right?
02:05:01Because you have de-basification right now in the Middle East, which means that all these
02:05:06planes, all this weaponry is now forced to go to Israel because it's the only safe space.
02:05:12Under that hypothetical, I agree with you, but what you see with, let's take the Democratic
02:05:17Party and about a third of the Republican Party is they're not having that.
02:05:22So what you see is as that, exactly your scenario, by the way, is one of the big reasons why there's
02:05:29been so much anger against Israel.
02:05:31So there's two actors or two actors that are getting blamed for this war in Iran,
02:05:37which is wrecking the world's economy.
02:05:39It's number one, President Trump, and number two, it's Israel.
02:05:42And both of those are in deep trouble as we go forward.
02:05:47And Israel's in trouble with the American public.
02:05:50Israel is losing the American public in droves.
02:05:53Israel is losing profoundly because Israel has always faced enemies that it could defeat.
02:06:01With this alliance that occurred, with Turkey evolving, Israel is much too weak to do this.
02:06:07Therefore, Israel has to change its fundamental strategy, which to face the fact that it's a
02:06:13small country in an area that doesn't welcome it, make peace, try to find ways to enter it.
02:06:22So when Israel takes a look at this alliance that was formed, there are two ways to look at it.
02:06:28One, it might restrain non-state actors.
02:06:32Other, it is a massive alliance that threatens Israel.
02:06:35So at this point, Israel is making very strange sounds like,
02:06:40you know, we're going to do something about Turkey.
02:06:42They can't do it.
02:06:44This is a situation in which Israel has not found itself in,
02:06:48where it does not have the military power to deal with a threat.
02:06:53So you look at this from two sides.
02:06:56One, yes, I think the Israelis manipulated Trump's thinking.
02:07:01That was very clear.
02:07:04At the same time, Netanyahu has made massive
02:07:07mistakes in overestimating his influence and his power.
02:07:11Do you think Congress will pass the NDAA, which will allow Israel to access data and intelligence
02:07:18from the U.S. military?
02:07:19Not if the Democrats take Congress.
02:07:21I can't imagine that happening.
02:07:22Not if the Democrats.
02:07:23And I don't even think if the Democrats don't, because I think that this is,
02:07:27you've been part of the reason that your attention, bringing this attention on social media,
02:07:32I think it's been very important, Chang.
02:07:34Because I think that the more sunlight that falls on that,
02:07:39the much less likely this is to happen.
02:07:42Israel's grand strategic problem from the beginning and to this day is,
02:07:48it is seven million Jews surrounded by...
02:07:51Nine million, I think.
02:07:52Well, nine million, seven million Jews.
02:07:55Yeah, sorry.
02:07:55No, you've got two million who don't...
02:07:57That's right.
02:07:57That's right.
02:07:57That's right.
02:07:58Seven million Jews.
02:07:58Also, that is 71 miles wide at its widest point.
02:08:02Yeah, but seven million Jews surrounded by three to four hundred million Muslims,
02:08:08depending on how far out you want to count with Pakistan.
02:08:12So that ratio, the only way you can have Israel the greater project is with American power.
02:08:21So if you have American power withdraw completely from the Middle East with the way Iran wants it to be,
02:08:27and that may end up being the outcome, then Israel's in deep trouble.
02:08:32If they can't stop Iran now and those missiles coming into Iran now,
02:08:37with America's presence still there, what's going to happen a year or two from now when there's no military
02:08:43from America there.
02:08:45Israel, those seven million are going to be on their own up against those three to four hundred million.
02:08:52I don't think this means Israel, by the way, gets wiped off the face of the map,
02:08:56but I do think it becomes at least a set...
02:09:00It'll be a second tier power at best.
02:09:02Israel was successful in wars.
02:09:05It gave it an illusion of power.
02:09:09What is evolving now geopolitically in the Middle East
02:09:13is terrifying to the Israelis, particularly with the rise of Turkey.
02:09:17At the same time, the United States now wants to withdraw from these various conflicts
02:09:22and even wants to reduce its reliability on Israel as well.
02:09:28And there's movements in the United States in the public and also in strategists and stuff.
02:09:34The fundamental crisis in Israel is one that the Americans can't solve
02:09:39because the American public is not going to go that deeply into it.
02:09:43But there is the possibility of accommodation by Israel.
02:09:47Now, Netanyahu does not believe in accommodation and believes he must use force in all cases.
02:09:55He can't.
02:09:56Now, he's had a peace treaty with Egypt for many years and it's held.
02:10:02The theory that Netanyahu has that no agreement with the Arabs will ever be honored.
02:10:08In this particular case, he's wrong because the Egyptians did.
02:10:13Certainly Saudi Arabia has nothing hostile to Israel.
02:10:16They've been quietly working with them on intelligence matters and a range of things, okay?
02:10:21Pakistan has no fundamental interest in Israel.
02:10:26And Turkey really has many bigger fish to fry as it evolves than Israel.
02:10:34At the same time, Israel does not know how not to call attention on itself.
02:10:39It somehow always gets into it because its grand strategy has been since its founding,
02:10:45always attack, be stronger than the other guy, but they've reached a point where they're not,
02:10:50and they won't be.
02:10:51So the question is, how does Israel evolve in this situation,
02:10:56along with how does the American relationship with Israel evolve?
02:11:00Very deep questions for these areas.
02:11:02But I think you're absolutely right that Israel is at the heart of this as a problem.
02:11:07But at this point, it's profoundly weakening, hour by hour almost.
02:11:13Why is it that Israel's got so much influence over the UN?
02:11:16Oh, money.
02:11:17It's money.
02:11:18It's AIPAC.
02:11:18This is in the Israel lobby, John Mearsheimer and Steve Waltz's book.
02:11:21They lay it out.
02:11:23And it's fundamentally, it's a very simple story, which is that although anybody can give money to
02:11:30elections, it's a free and open process.
02:11:33It just turns out, if you look at all the data, that Jews as a group give more money than any other
02:11:41group per capita, and as a group overall, about a third of all money in elections is coming from
02:11:47Jewish America.
02:11:48There is a very different reason.
02:11:49During the Cold War, the Soviets had relations with Syria, had relations with Egypt, and so on.
02:11:59The Cold War was fought there as well.
02:12:03When the Arabs attacked Israel in 1973, okay, it was with Soviet weapons, Soviet training,
02:12:11many cases, Soviet tactics imposed.
02:12:16Israel at that point was one of the few countries that was pro-American and who had a strategic
02:12:23point that it could undermine Egypt.
02:12:25It could undermine these things.
02:12:27So remember, ever since the Suez crisis, the Soviets had gotten involved in it.
02:12:33The Cold War is over now.
02:12:35These are not relevant to this thing, but it's not simply money or something like that.
02:12:40That was there too.
02:12:41But that when in the Cold War, you take a look at the situation that the Russians had,
02:12:47and the amount of influence they had even in Lebanon and so on and so forth, destabilizing,
02:12:52it was deeply involved in the region, and the United States didn't have very firm allies.
02:12:57They had Iran as an ally, had Israel as an ally, and they were players.
02:13:03So that situation is obsolete.
02:13:07The Soviets are now longer there, and so it's irrelevant.
02:13:11So to answer your question, why Israel has someone's power, there's an alliance between
02:13:16the Zionist capital, basically AIPAC, as well as Christian evangelicals, which is about a quarter of the
02:13:26population.
02:13:27Among these Christian evangelicals, maybe a minority are Christian Zionists.
02:13:34And they believe that Israel is God's plan to save the world.
02:13:39So Israel has to be protected on all costs.
02:13:43So you have this massive alliance between Zionist capital, and then you have these fanatical
02:13:50Christian evangelicals.
02:13:52So one of the most powerful organizations in the United States is something called
02:13:56Christians United for Israel, run by someone named John Hadji, and about 7 million members.
02:14:02And all they care about is Israel.
02:14:04So if you're a congressman, and you say anything bad about Israel, you have like millions of people
02:14:07literally calling you up every single day, bitching at you, like literally.
02:14:13These are the people who are funding the West Bank settlers, and they are the main cause of
02:14:18friction between the Israelis and the Arabs, because these West Bank settlers are just
02:14:26complete nutso, they're crazy.
02:14:30So you say that, okay, in November, the issue lobby will be taught a lesson.
02:14:37But if you got like this alliance in place, right, between Zionist capital, and we're talking like
02:14:42a lot of money, right, they put in like $30 million to defeat Thomas Mass in Kentucky,
02:14:46they put in $70 million to defeat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
02:14:51That's a lot of money for a primary, right?
02:14:54They almost have access to unlimited capital.
02:14:55They have someone like Laren David Ellison, who's able to buy up CBS News and install Barry Weiss.
02:15:02So this alliance is almost unprecedented in American politics.
02:15:08So I don't see how just disgust with Israel can negate the power of the Israel lobby.
02:15:18Well, you're seeing that Jewish representatives running for Congress are losing right and left.
02:15:24So it's not just whether they are Jews running for the American Congress, whether they are the Christian Zionists running for the Congress.
02:15:34And one of the big things that's underneath that is that there is a large movement among the right.
02:15:41So most of the evangelicals are on the right.
02:15:45They're not on the left.
02:15:46They're not Democrats.
02:15:47They're conservatives.
02:15:49Many of the folks supporting, say, Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent has run for office several times.
02:15:56They are folks that are extremely unhappy with the role of Israel in driving the foreign wars as they see it.
02:16:05I see it as a secondary factor.
02:16:07They agree with you, Jane, that it's a number one factor.
02:16:10And what they're doing is they're voting the bums out.
02:16:12They're literally voting the bums out and replacing them with new people who they think
02:16:19are going to zero out the money for Israel.
02:16:21And I think they're going to hold those people to account.
02:16:23They want Israel's money to be zeroed out.
02:16:26And that is not realizing that the primary use of Israel is obsolete.
02:16:34Syria does not have Russian bases, Soviet bases.
02:16:38Egypt is not a Soviet power, potentially blocking the Suez Canal and so on and so forth.
02:16:45So Israel is once a vital asset for the United States under the circumstances.
02:16:51Surely as long as Israel has money, it's a vital asset for the United States.
02:16:54No, the answer is a lot of countries have far more money than Israel.
02:16:58Can they put it into American politics as easily as Israel can?
02:17:02If that was the only thing that was doing it, that'd be true.
02:17:08On the other hand, if you go back to the Cold War and how desperate it was,
02:17:13the relationship between the U.S. and Israel isn't based on money, and nobody challenges it,
02:17:19because the Soviets are so powerful there.
02:17:22The reason this is happening now, this anger against Israel, is not just it's another forever war.
02:17:29It's because this is the war that's hurting the American pocketbook in a serious way.
02:17:36If you go back since 1991, and you can even go back further.
02:17:41But if listeners will just go back to 1991 and call up on Google and say,
02:17:46give me a chart of annual GDP growth or decline in the United States since 1991 to today.
02:17:53They're going to see some great patterns.
02:17:55They're going to see, number one, GDP growth goes down during the 2007, say, housing crisis, COVID,
02:18:03but it does not go down during the Gulf War in '91.
02:18:06It does not go down in Kosovo.
02:18:08It does not go down in 2003 when we invade Iraq.
02:18:11It does not go down during the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
02:18:15This war is different.
02:18:17And the reason it's different is not just it's another war in a long period of time.
02:18:22It's different because this is the war that Americans are feeling it in their pocketbook for real.
02:18:29So if it is a case that the American public is turning against Israel, and I certainly hope so,
02:18:35how did Thomas Massey, who was one of the most ardent anti-Israel voices in Congress.
02:18:41Oh, Trump. Trump went after him in a big way.
02:18:44You got the, so Trump, Trump targeted Massey and he targeted Marjorie Taylor Greene.
02:18:49He targeted Massey.
02:18:51And when you're targeted by Trump, and we know this most from Marjorie Taylor Greene,
02:18:56this means assassination attempts against you and your kids and your families.
02:19:01So this isn't just a small, this isn't just a political targeting we're talking about.
02:19:06So, so let's summarize what you're saying.
02:19:09Number one is you believe money has a significant
02:19:12impact on American politics.
02:19:14Oh, yeah.
02:19:14And Zionists have a lot of money to spend.
02:19:17Yeah.
02:19:17Okay, that's number one.
02:19:18Number two is, Trump is very powerful within the Republican Party.
02:19:24So if he targets you, whether you be Thomas Massey or MTG, you will, you will, you will lose.
02:19:32Right. But I think Trump's influence is waning.
02:19:34I think it's, it's up for grabs between now and January.
02:19:37That's what I'm saying.
02:19:38And it's what's driving the escalation trap.
02:19:40His desire to hold on to power is what's really driving the escalation trap between now and January.
02:19:46And, and I am willing to, I definitely agree.
02:19:48It's an uphill battle because of all the money and all the sort of, you know, institutionalization as you are explaining it.
02:19:55That's all true.
02:19:56However, that can crumble within a period of just a couple of years.
02:20:01I don't think this idea that, that it will take five or 10 years.
02:20:05In fact, by 2028, I'm expecting there will be a candidate for the democratic presidency of the United States.
02:20:13There will be avowedly anti-Zionist, not just kind of on the edges.
02:20:18And I think this is just, that's what they'll almost run on.
02:20:21I think at least one person, because yes, almost run on because somebody's going to be blamed for all the wreckage of this Iran war.
02:20:32And who are you going to blame?
02:20:34Why wouldn't you just blame Trump?
02:20:35Because Trump will already be toast by that point.
02:20:38You're going to, this isn't, this, this wreckage is going to go on for a while.
02:20:43You need to, you need an active candidate.
02:20:45I'm just saying we don't, we're not going to be done blaming people because, you know, Iran.
02:20:50So this Iran war is one of the biggest messes in modern history.
02:20:54It's the biggest mess.
02:20:55It's the biggest mess since we have had in our country.
02:20:58Since, since, since really all the go back to all the way, world war one, there's no bigger.
02:21:04Biggest mess in a hundred years.
02:21:05Yes.
02:21:06Not because of the casualties.
02:21:07So we were used to.
02:21:08Well, it's basically been at least on.
02:21:10It's the economic consequences that are so big.
02:21:14And as you're hearing, and I agree with his economic analysis here, he's talking about massive economic.
02:21:20The clap all the economy.
02:21:22Oh my gosh, it's massive.
02:21:23And I, I hope he's wrong.
02:21:25I mean, this is where I'm predicting the escalator.
02:21:27You're predicting the other.
02:21:28And I think we each hope the other is not quite right.
02:21:31Right.
02:21:31But I am really concerned with his analysis because I can't chip away.
02:21:37I brought Jeff Curry on my sub stack to do these, you know, sort of like what you do here,
02:21:42here, because I think he's just an amazing economist and so forth.
02:21:45He's right there.
02:21:46I mean, so here's, so he's right.
02:21:48Can you give me, can you, can I'd like to say, okay, I agree.
02:21:54This will be the biggest price if it doesn't end.
02:21:59If it ends, it'll become like those other wars that we've had and passed and it goes on.
02:22:04The fundamental question is, how does it end?
02:22:08How could it end?
02:22:09And so on and so forth.
02:22:13We don't understand.
02:22:14I don't understand fully the nature of political systems in Russia or in Iran and how they continue
02:22:22the wars.
02:22:23So before we're ready to say this is the biggest disaster, I would say, yes, if it continues,
02:22:29it will certainly be that.
02:22:31So far, it has not created the kind of crisis in the United States, for example, that Vietnam did by far.
02:22:39So it's a question of how does this end?
02:22:42How long would it have to go on for if it goes on for another year?
02:22:46Would you say it's the biggest crisis?
02:22:47I have no way to see it because I don't know the consequences, nor do I know how to formally
02:22:53fought or what will happen in the Straits of Hormuz and so on.
02:22:56So if they were in the Straits of Hormuz and so on, if they were secured and the war went on,
02:23:01it might have one path and there's another path.
02:23:04But Trump, don't you see, George, that Trump's effort to end the war quickly with a victory for
02:23:10Trump is what is likely to create the Pyrrhic victory that's going to go on and on?
02:23:16The answer is I probably agree with you, but I'm not certain because I'm not certain about how Iran is evolving.
02:23:26So I agree with you certainly that if this war continues, the consequences will be massive.
02:23:33I also agree with you that Trump will have a great deal of difficulty ending it on his own terms.
02:23:40But there's a variable there that we have to take seriously.
02:23:43The internal capabilities are in.
02:23:44We do have to put some probabilities between now and November, which is what, 75 days?
02:23:51I think between now and November to expect Iran to implode, which is possible.
02:23:57I would say possible, but I wouldn't even give it a 10% chance between now and November.
02:24:02I think they're using the election to try to force Trump into a position that he has to end it,
02:24:09even by making massive concessions.
02:24:11We agree.
02:24:11There we agree.
02:24:12So what's the likelihood of Trump voluntarily ending it?
02:24:15Well, I think this, without more...
02:24:18Zero percent.
02:24:20Zero percent.
02:24:20Zero percent.
02:24:21Yeah, I think that what you're seeing is the opposite.
02:24:23He is more likely to use force, and it's starting with economic force, to get a symbolic victory.
02:24:31And I don't think Iran is going to play their part.
02:24:33Iran is just not willing to give him the victory that he can...
02:24:37Yeah, they're giving him the middle finger.
02:24:38So in the same way that we say Trump doesn't have the power to do these things, we have
02:24:44to take a look at the power of Iran as well.
02:24:47So one of the things that Trump wants is to end the war and not be a crippled president,
02:24:54above all else.
02:24:55Yep.
02:24:57Iranians seem to be operating, trying to push it out.
02:25:01Now, come October, he can't...
02:25:05The president cannot make a deal.
02:25:07They're trying to force him into a position to negotiate it, and they're succeeding,
02:25:12because he understands he's going to lose power if he continues this.
02:25:17So now we ask the question, psychologically, that I can't answer.
02:25:20Does Trump care more about remaining powerful as president, or more about beating the Iranians,
02:25:27because he started the war and he wanted to be successful?
02:25:30I have no idea which way it goes.
02:25:32But the Iranians, I think, are sophisticated and are using it, and using the election as a bargaining chip.
02:25:41If Trump wants to win this war and bring world peace and prosperity,
02:25:47he needs to do two things, okay?
02:25:48If he does these two things, I guarantee you, this war will end.
02:25:52The United States will come up on top.
02:25:53And these two things are, one, give $2 trillion to Iran.
02:25:58$2 trillion to Iran.
02:26:00$2 trillion to Iran.
02:26:02The United States is $42 in debt.
02:26:04Give $2 trillion to Iran, not a big deal.
02:26:06The second thing is, control Israel.
02:26:10Embargo Israel.
02:26:10Saying like, if you misbehave, we will cut off arms to you guys, and we'll no longer support you.
02:26:17Right?
02:26:17So withdraw from Lebanon.
02:26:19Stop these seven wars you're fighting right now.
02:26:23Come to peace with the Palestinians.
02:26:25So if he does these two things, he will be remembered as the greatest president in U.S. history.
02:26:30What do you think?
02:26:30No, no, no, no.
02:26:31Zero percent.
02:26:32No, no, no.
02:26:33First of all, first of all, I think...
02:26:35So I think that the problem with the plan, first of all, I think that containing Israel
02:26:43is becoming more and more part of President Trump's repertoire.
02:26:47He's not doing as much as I think he should be, but it's become...
02:26:50The bigger part is your first point.
02:26:52The key problem President Trump faces is he's trying to end this conflict between now in the midterms,
02:27:00or now in, say, January, but really now in the midterms.
02:27:04And if he were to give two trillion dollars, what would happen is Iran would say, sure,
02:27:10we also want you to pull all your forces out.
02:27:13Fine.
02:27:13Trump pulls all the forces out and...
02:27:15It's only happening.
02:27:16No, hold it.
02:27:16Hold it.
02:27:17And two trillion dollars.
02:27:18And what then is Iran going to do?
02:27:20It's going to likely topple the governments in the Gulf States.
02:27:25It's not going to sit back and say, oh, sure, fine.
02:27:29Because they've got free reign, because there's no oversight.
02:27:31Because there's a power vacuum.
02:27:32Yeah.
02:27:32What has been created now, and this would make it even worse, is a power vacuum where it used to be
02:27:39America preeminent, Israel on the rise, Iran declined.
02:27:43Well, now the power vacuum is because this is changing.
02:27:47And what's going to fill that power vacuum is critical for the future.
02:27:52Iran, under your plan, they will fill the vacuum for Iran, and this will wreck Trump's future.
02:27:59It's not just Trump won't viscerally do it.
02:28:03This is just going to wreck Trump's future.
02:28:06I did not say give Iran two trillion dollars of gold.
02:28:09I said give them two trillion dollars.
02:28:11Two trillion U.S. dollars, which means that...
02:28:14Oh, it's going to be worthless anyway.
02:28:15Well, yeah, that's the point.
02:28:16If you want the two trillion dollars, you want the two trillion dollars, okay?
02:28:22You need to participate in the global economy.
02:28:24You need to make sure the Middle East is able to send oil to East Asia.
02:28:29Well, no, this is a version of J.D. Vance's idea of pay for performance.
02:28:33And as I argued before, when the MOU was coming up,
02:28:36Vance's whole approach to this as a business deal, I think, was completely misguided.
02:28:41What Iran is doing is not a business deal, pay for performance like playing a football player.
02:28:46What they want is power.
02:28:48Power is what's at issue.
02:28:50So that's why I'm describing is there's a power vacuum.
02:28:53Who's going to fill the vacuum?
02:28:54It's not about the money per se.
02:28:57It's about power because in international politics, that's what determines outcomes.
02:29:0420 years ago, there was a philosophy in Washington called neoliberalism.
02:29:08I'm not sure if it's still around, but the idea was...
02:29:10Oh, it's fading fast.
02:29:11Well, the idea was that trade would promote peace, right?
02:29:14So if you wanted peace and Middle East, you just trade it with Iran.
02:29:17Iran has a lot of oil.
02:29:18You let them sell the oil and then you have peace.
02:29:21Yeah.
02:29:22Is there anything wrong with that idea?
02:29:24There's nothing inherently wrong with it as long as you had a big protector like
02:29:30the United States that could enforce the stability on which that deal rested.
02:29:35And this is your point about how globalization is coming unglued.
02:29:39So I agree.
02:29:40I wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs laying out that what's happening
02:29:44with the Iran war is America as protector of the global rules of power, meaning stability for commerce,
02:29:54is simply coming unglued.
02:29:56So it's not just here in the Middle East.
02:29:58It's going to be around the world.
02:30:00And in '91, when America won this stunning victory in the Middle East,
02:30:05it wasn't just confidence that America could police the sea lanes in the Middle East.
02:30:10There was confidence America could police the sea lanes globally.
02:30:13That's why trade went from 38% of world product to 62% of world product.
02:30:20Think about that.
02:30:21Because it became cheaper to trade.
02:30:23You didn't have to worry about instability as much.
02:30:26Now instability is back.
02:30:29What does that mean?
02:30:30Trade is more expensive, more risky insurance rates.
02:30:33And what does that mean?
02:30:34Anything that becomes more expensive, you get less of it.
02:30:37Do you think Trump's really serious about pulling out of NATO?
02:30:41Oh, I don't think it even I think NATO's already dead in terms of the key element of NATO.
02:30:47But is it not symbolic to do that?
02:30:49It's not about that.
02:30:50NATO at its core is not just a political alliance.
02:30:54What's in Article 5 is that once Article 5 is declared a U.S. General,
02:31:00there's no other decision.
02:31:02It's a U.S. General, Sack Yor, who commands all the NATO troops, not just U.S. troops,
02:31:09all the NATO troops, the British troops, the German troops.
02:31:13France not in NATO for this reason.
02:31:15And that is what NATO is.
02:31:17NATO is a unified, it's a war fighting unified alliance,
02:31:23where you decide in advance the Americans call the shots for everybody.
02:31:28Who's gonna be in Europe is gonna, after what they've been through, who's gonna let America
02:31:34run British troops?
02:31:35But you should also remember that the Americans don't want to be exposed there.
02:31:39Always in, when you're looking at Trump, okay, and he was serious about these forever wars,
02:31:46that he clumsily, stupidly got involved in one is true, but he hit a fundamental principle of the United
02:31:55States.
02:31:56We did not want to be involved in these wars, these endless wars that we lost.
02:32:01It never helped.
02:32:01There's actually a much simpler reason.
02:32:03Trump really hates the Europeans.
02:32:05He hates the Europeans much more than hates the Iranians.
02:32:08He blames, I'm serious, he blames the Europeans for his 2020 election loss.
02:32:13He thinks that Obama conspired the Europeans to defeat him.
02:32:17That's why he went out of NATO.
02:32:18I'd be doing a patriotic disservice if I didn't bring it up.
02:32:22Is the UK ever seriously gonna be considered in discussions of world powers moving forward again?
02:32:27Well, if you, so I look at percentages of a country's world product compared to world product.
02:32:33If you look at the UK in 1990, that was around six to six and a half percent of world GDP.
02:32:39What is it today?
02:32:41Just under 4%.
02:32:42So what's happened since 1990?
02:32:44So again, I track power with some key metrics that we can observe.
02:32:49And in 1990, America was 26% of world's GDP.
02:32:53China was 2%.
02:32:56And the Europeans varied from about five to 7%, Germany the highest.
02:33:01You look today and America's flat at 26.
02:33:05China's up from two to 17.
02:33:07And what's happened to all those Europeans?
02:33:10They're down by a third or more.
02:33:12Who's the sucker here?
02:33:14So people say we've been uncle.
02:33:16This is my one of my complaints against this argument that America's uncle sucker.
02:33:21No, we played the Europeans here, not the other way around.
02:33:26And Japan.
02:33:27So this is why I don't worry about Japan was over 10% of world's GDP.
02:33:33At that point, where are they today?
02:33:354%, 4%.
02:33:38So this is all World Bank numbers.
02:33:40People listening can go and Google it.
02:33:42You will see that we have been inordinately privileged by this period called the Cold War,
02:33:50which this war is ending at the expense of other countries.
02:33:55One of the things you should point out, however, is Japan responded by massively
02:34:01increasing its military power.
02:34:03So it did not simply look at us at the United States and say, where are you going?
02:34:08It took action.
02:34:10And China now worries a great deal about Japan.
02:34:14The Europeans thought it was in a moral act, improper, to want to pull back and depend on it.
02:34:23The American point of view was the EU is larger than China economically.
02:34:28There is no possible reason why we should be the primary defender of Europe.
02:34:34That was a fundamental reason for many years.
02:34:37But why now?
02:34:38So I don't think this should be put in a Trump load.
02:34:42I think with or without Trump, this questioning of whether or not we should remain exposed
02:34:51in NATO and what NATO should evolve into would have been put on the table by any president at this point.
02:34:59The China example is very much what Europe should have done.
02:35:04We pulled back from that.
02:35:06The Japanese is creating a much greater force along with the Australians and along with the Vietnamese
02:35:16who are now involved in that too.
02:35:17So many things are happening.
02:35:19So I think there are limits to what we can blame Trump for.
02:35:23We mentioned this earlier on.
02:35:24I wasn't really blaming Trump.
02:35:27I was just showing the hole in the argument.
02:35:29I understand that.
02:35:30I'm simply saying that there is a very reasonable redefinition of Europe after Ukraine
02:35:39defeated, essentially, Russia.
02:35:41We mentioned this earlier on, changing demographics, specifically in China.
02:35:45But this is happening globally.
02:35:46It looks like global population is going to peak 2100, something like that.
02:35:50And weight decline is happening, not just in the United States, but in Europe as well.
02:35:54This is the bottom of 10 billion, maybe.
02:35:58And then it's going to do this, unless there's some intervention that we can't yet foresee.
02:36:03When it comes to you guys planning out how you think about the future geopolitically,
02:36:08how much of a curveball is the potential changing demographics?
02:36:15Obviously, we've got AI and robotics and automation coming in at the same time.
02:36:19But what it seems like China's doing is basically trying to speedrun
02:36:23using humans to build robots so that the robots can replace the humans once the humans have
02:36:28fucked off.
02:36:29Well, how do you think about global population decline playing into your models moving forward?
02:36:34So this war in Middle East, people don't really appreciate the geopolitical consequences.
02:36:41So right now, we're about 8 billion people.
02:36:43But if you talk to economists, they'll tell you that the earth by itself can only support about
02:36:482 billion people.
02:36:49The way we get around this is with fertilizer, right?
02:36:52So Middle East is important not just because it provides cheap energy,
02:36:55but it also provides a lot of fertilizer to the world.
02:36:59I can't remember the exact number, maybe a quarter to a third of the world's fertilizer.
02:37:03So if a quarter to a third of the world's fertilizer goes offline for a year,
02:37:08then you're going to have millions of people starve to death.
02:37:12So there's no way we will reach 9 billion people.
02:37:15You will see massive starvation throughout Africa at some point.
02:37:19How do you think this is going to happen?
02:37:20You don't think?
02:37:20Oh, I think it's baked in already.
02:37:23So I agree, maybe for a slightly different angle on this, which is,
02:37:28so I think about power, balance of power.
02:37:31You're hearing me come everything from a balance of power perspective.
02:37:35That's why I sometimes agree, disagree with the other.
02:37:37But from the balance of power, what's happening?
02:37:39America was preeminent from 1991 until this war.
02:37:45America is being knocked back because for the first time since 91,
02:37:49a state beat America.
02:37:52Just think about that.
02:37:54And everybody's learning that lesson that America can be beaten.
02:37:58Well, that means America's global influence that we call it the world empire.
02:38:03You can call it American hegemony.
02:38:05This is now fading fast.
02:38:07What's going to replace it?
02:38:09We could say it's multi polarity.
02:38:11I think it's going to be more fragmented than that.
02:38:14I think you're going to see you might even call it a emerging anarchy that's going to occur.
02:38:19And under those conditions here, this is because the states that used to be under America's protection,
02:38:28they're not under America's protection before you're talking.
02:38:30We're talking about Japan building force.
02:38:32And notice we're not saying Japan getting America to come and help it.
02:38:35We're talking about Japan on its own.
02:38:37Many states around the world are thinking this way.
02:38:42That's what I mean by an emerging anarchy.
02:38:44It's not really quite a multi polar world.
02:38:46It's more fragmented than that.
02:38:48Who would be the Poles?
02:38:49It'll be a center.
02:38:52U.S. and China have aligning interests fundamentally.
02:38:56And we are seeing that diplomatic process playing out.
02:39:01I think it will succeed with an understanding.
02:39:05But at the same time, China is not the Soviet Union.
02:39:08It doesn't occupy countries.
02:39:11It uses economic influence in those countries, investment and so on and so forth.
02:39:15So it's a very different country.
02:39:17Not too different from the United States in the way it operates as well.
02:39:21Although the United States actually operates with more military power.
02:39:27But in this emerging anarchy, you will see greater incentives for nuclear proliferation.
02:39:33For example, with greater incentive, and you already saw that with Iran, Saudi Arabia,
02:39:39you will see these incentives start to spread as a result of this war.
02:39:44What will also happen as a result of the incentives for proliferation
02:39:49is concerns about preventive wars, preemptive wars to stop that.
02:39:55So we've worried about for some time, Poland might start to think about going nuclear.
02:40:01People are already noticing Putin has been focusing on Poland.
02:40:05Why would Putin focus on Poland?
02:40:07I'm going to Poland next week to meet the president.
02:40:10There you go.
02:40:11Ask him if he's got any nukes.
02:40:13The answer is Poland is the Eastern Front of Europe.
02:40:18It cannot trust the Western Front because it's the alliance of the willing.
02:40:23Okay.
02:40:24And with that statement, that shows it.
02:40:28Poland is evolving dramatically.
02:40:30And it has the capability and is discussing becoming a nuclear power.
02:40:34There you go.
02:40:34So the question of, because when I talk to them, I constantly hear back, you know,
02:40:42we're not counting in the United States.
02:40:44We have 10,000 troops there, but we're not counting in the United States.
02:40:48So it's evolving dramatically.
02:40:50And it's going to be looking at that.
02:40:52So I agree with you that the need to have nuclear weapons,
02:40:56okay, or the supposed need to have nuclear weapons will create it.
02:41:00But at the same time, I see the economic alliance between the United States and China,
02:41:08and I think that's going to happen, is going to create a strange
02:41:13poll between the two, because they have very similar interests.
02:41:17I don't disagree with you.
02:41:18I don't disagree with Zhang.
02:41:20What I'm saying is we're moving to a more war-prone world.
02:41:25Yep.
02:41:26Well, the world is fairly full of war for a while.
02:41:29But this is about to get much worse.
02:41:31What are the places that you're keeping an eye on with regards to
02:41:34conflicts that aren't just going to expand from existing ones now?
02:41:37North Korea.
02:41:38North Korea's the big one.
02:41:42If I'm North Korea, and I'm, you know, I'm poor, but I've got nuclear weapons,
02:41:47and Japan, China, South Korea are all distracted,
02:41:51why don't I just extort everyone?
02:41:53Right?
02:41:53Why don't I just, like, you know, hold a gun to everyone's head,
02:41:56and I just say, "Pay up," or I'll just blow you all up.
02:41:58China itself has tensions with North Korea.
02:42:01That's right.
02:42:02Okay.
02:42:02Why is it the case in this, whatever you want to call it, global quasi-anarchist world?
02:42:09Why?
02:42:10Why is that happening?
02:42:11Because we have lived under a certain amount of stability from 1991,
02:42:18when the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union, that Cold War conflict receded.
02:42:23It was immediately followed by the first Gulf War,
02:42:26which showed America could easily beat Iraq,
02:42:31which was a power trying to control the world's economy.
02:42:34Now people know that daddy can't look after everybody.
02:42:36Daddy can't take care of you anymore.
02:42:38Daddy's either too old, baby boomers, so maybe, you know,
02:42:40they're too old.
02:42:41Daddy's too old.
02:42:42He's not got the sauce anymore.
02:42:44And he doesn't have all his marbles.
02:42:46And I'll also assert the other thing.
02:42:48The United States doesn't want that role.
02:42:50So it's not only they can't do it, it doesn't want to do it.
02:42:54So it's strange to think that you can have a globe with a bunch of different nation states,
02:43:00individual countries who are competing with each other,
02:43:03and sometimes in tension with each other,
02:43:04but you still kind of need somebody in charge.
02:43:07Yeah.
02:43:07And now there's nobody in charge.
02:43:09So, yeah.
02:43:10You know what?
02:43:10If you go back to 2000, the world was perfect.
02:43:14But then, I'm serious, the world was perfect in 2000.
02:43:16It was pretty perfect.
02:43:17Yeah, Nickelback was about to come along.
02:43:19Decided to go invade Iraq, Libya, Syria, and create all this chaos in the Middle East.
02:43:28And then it started to sanction Russia.
02:43:31NATO started to expand westwards.
02:43:34And then you have this conflict in Ukraine between Russia.
02:43:39So, I mean, I think it's hubris.
02:43:43So it's not just the United States becoming exhausted and doesn't want its power.
02:43:47I think it's also hubris.
02:43:48So this makes the Iran war even more stupid.
02:43:53Oh, yeah.
02:43:53It sort of expedited something that was already kind of quite predictable.
02:43:58I've modeled other wars and conflict for years.
02:44:00This was the one I modeled for 20 years, year after year, in and out.
02:44:05Why?
02:44:05And it was because this was the next German.
02:44:08This was the biggest problem, if we took it on,
02:44:11that we would find for United States since Germany.
02:44:14Why the fuck do it?
02:44:15In the world.
02:44:16That's what I'm asking, right?
02:44:17We're trying to tell you the reasons, but we will be debating this, Chris, for decades.
02:44:25I will agree with you that if it extends, it will be on that.
02:44:30It has not extended.
02:44:32Let's not overestimate it yet.
02:44:33I understand on that, but if you say this is an insane move, which if you give it enough time, and it's not that much time, presumably 18 months or two and a half years or something like that, it's a really big deal.
02:44:47We don't need to worry about it, it wasn't that big of an error if we don't reach the end of the gangplank.
02:44:54No, no, no, no, no.
02:44:55Like, you're already on the plank.
02:44:56You're walking.
02:44:56There's water either side of you.
02:44:58That's right.
02:44:58If you just about manage to turn around at the end and then reverse your direction.
02:45:02And the difference between life and death is how far you go down the plank.
02:45:08I agree, but it doesn't make me think that I'm less confident about the decision.
02:45:12Because you get a little wind that pushes you off the plank.
02:45:14Yeah, but it really is like, oh, this was the worst thing you could do.
02:45:20This was absolutely, yes.
02:45:21And I think this was where the real issue with President Trump walling himself off from anything like strong advisors.
02:45:32So if you just look at the advisors around Trump, I'm sorry, this is just an extremely weak group of advisors.
02:45:39And Natalie Harp as well.
02:45:41I will also say for the American point of view, Vietnam was far worse than this war from the American point of view.
02:45:48On a global point of view, it was not that terrible.
02:45:51Exactly.
02:45:51But for the Americans, this was the moment.
02:45:54That's why after Vietnam, we could just shift over to deal with Europe, try to defend Europe from the Soviet Union.
02:46:01This war, we're not shifting.
02:46:03Dude, if this turns out, if history looks back and does its analysis and finds out that one guy one morning just decided to press the button.
02:46:12Yes.
02:46:12Like that, oh, what was the motivation?
02:46:14Was it some deeply sought after, analyst-fueled thing?
02:46:18It's like, no, some guy just woke up and decided to press a button.
02:46:21You will think, how was it that we allowed power to be centralized so much behind one human who's got biases?
02:46:28There's a famous commercial by Hillary Clinton in 2016, which is, the red phone is ringing, it's 3 a.m., and that means that was the phone to the nuclear weapons.
02:46:39Who do you want to answer that phone?
02:46:41This is the way we built our Constitution, Chris.
02:46:44One person makes that decision.
02:46:46But I would argue that, don't overestimate, okay, if you extrapolate all the way forward, okay, but see the forces that are making Iran itself consider what to do, and so on.
02:47:02So, yes, if this war continued, it would have massive effects.
02:47:08It has already had significant effects.
02:47:11On the other hand, do not assume that we understand, at this point, just how far Iran can go as well.
02:47:19Yes, one man started this war, okay, he's failed to win it.
02:47:25But do not assume that this war cannot end except go on forever.
02:47:32I very much hope that it does.
02:47:33Well, when I say January, we'll know the answer to that.
02:47:36Is January kind of a point of no return for you?
02:47:38It's a point, it's an inflection point, because in January, either President Trump will have the wherewithal to be able to continue the war, or he won't.
02:47:50And that's because of the Democrats in Congress.
02:47:53So the Democrats will either win Congress or not, and if they win Congress, they'll either act to shut down the war or not.
02:48:00We will know this in January.
02:48:02The damage has already been done.
02:48:04Like, a lot of the facilities, the energy facilities, have been shut down.
02:48:09It's going to take them six months.
02:48:10Let's assume the war ends today or tomorrow.
02:48:12There's a difference between…
02:48:13It takes them six months to restart all these facilities.
02:48:15Yes.
02:48:16Well, in six months, it'll get better then.
02:48:18So we're talking about a fundamental shift in the nature of life on Earth, which could happen, but not in this shorter run.
02:48:29Well, wait a minute, but I don't think the two of you are as far apart, because remember, you're speaking in very, very broad strokes.
02:48:36What he is saying is that even by January, my threshold, he's very concerned about the debt crisis.
02:48:44He's very concerned about the world.
02:48:46He's worried about the world economy.
02:48:48So, and your point is, even if we have a world recession or depression, we'll recover.
02:48:54You two are not as far apart as you might think.
02:48:57But the point is, I think that we are at a bookend with this war.
02:49:02The one thing that won't come back is confidence in America as the protector of that global system.
02:49:10That's not coming back for decades.
02:49:11To end it, this is exactly what we in Texas want.
02:49:18Because we have, because we served during the Cold War at the Folder Gap.
02:49:26And there's really a desire in the United States, in the public, not to have this role.
02:49:33Okay?
02:49:34Among those of us working this, this is a natural thing that we should have this role.
02:49:40But when I talk to my neighbors, the idea that we are responsible for the world,
02:49:46and one of the reasons this hostility from the Texas Republicans toward Trump, very much so,
02:49:54is that he did what he promised he wouldn't do, get us involved again.
02:49:59Yes.
02:49:59And I'm not arguing for taking care of the world to take care of the world.
02:50:03I'm saying that America's primacy is not coming back.
02:50:08Is there a...
02:50:08And again, I will say, that's not a tragedy for America.
02:50:14Well, the economy losing the...
02:50:17If this is right, then the future of Social Security is not long for this world.
02:50:24And that's a tremendous problem.
02:50:26I have a 97-year-old mother-in-law.
02:50:29And I am seeing already that we are horrendous in this country.
02:50:33I've been taking care of people in their 90s.
02:50:37And we're going to have more people living in their 90s.
02:50:39What if Social Security goes away as a result of this war?
02:50:44I don't know how the connection can be made that would be possible.
02:50:48Well, this is more his area than mine.
02:50:51Well, I would argue that the American production and trade and everything else is critical to the world.
02:50:58It's the debt...
02:51:00It's these financial underpinnings that are being stressed so significantly.
02:51:04And they're crucial.
02:51:05When you look at world trade, you look at who consumes it and who can't consume it, the United States still has a role.
02:51:11Artificial intelligence now accounts for 50% of GDP growth in the United States.
02:51:1850% of GDP growth, or these AI data centers.
02:51:22Guess who's financing these data centers?
02:51:24The GCC.
02:51:26So imagine a scenario where this war continues.
02:51:28The GCC is no longer able to provide any financing.
02:51:33The bubble, the AI bubble burst.
02:51:35You have like millions of unemployed Americans.
02:51:40I mean, the consequences will be very dire.
02:51:45There's different models that may play out.
02:51:48That may be one of them.
02:51:50But I see it happening somewhat differently.
02:51:54Which is that the United States, dominating the Western Hemisphere,
02:52:00not having the price to pay in terms of defense and everything else, may well get by.
02:52:08So the issue here is not that the world isn't changing.
02:52:11I think we all agree that a radical new system is emerging.
02:52:15Okay?
02:52:16We may not agree on what it would look like, but it's certainly going to be different.
02:52:21At the same time, I don't view this evolution as catastrophic
02:52:26from the American point of view or from the global point of view.
02:52:28Is there a conflict or a war or an area of focus that everyone's preparing for right now
02:52:36that probably won't happen?
02:52:38Is there something that a lot of attention is being paid to?
02:52:42A type of-
02:52:42Nuclear war.
02:52:44Nuclear war will not happen.
02:52:45Why?
02:52:48Because there's no incentive for these nations to blow themselves up.
02:52:53Mad.
02:52:54Yeah, it's madness, right?
02:52:56Mutually sure destruction.
02:52:57Yeah, yeah.
02:52:58Which is why we haven't had any such wars.
02:53:00Yeah.
02:53:01Right.
02:53:01So I don't see any scenario where nuclear weapons are used, even tactically.
02:53:06I think that before the war started on February 28th, I put the odds of a nuclear weapon being used by the United States in this conflict,
02:53:16because I modeled for 20 years as under five percent by Israel at about 15 percent.
02:53:22So just to tell you where this has been.
02:53:23I've now essentially been doubling those over time because the nature of the players.
02:53:33So the modeling is agnostic to the decision makers right over time because you have different presidents come in.
02:53:38But what we've already seen is that President Trump is already inordinately looking into nuclear weapons.
02:53:47A dolphin, which is a nuclear, which is a nuclear arms carrying submarine by Israel.
02:53:53Israel moved it into the Red Sea within firing range of Tehran.
02:53:57Now, these are not by themselves just these are these are just movements.
02:54:02So I understand that.
02:54:03But nonetheless, these are encouraging Iran to move forward to do nuclear tests.
02:54:11So as you look at I'm not saying so as you just look at strategic interaction.
02:54:17So that's what a model is.
02:54:18It's not just one player.
02:54:20It's strategic interaction.
02:54:22The reason I've up my percentages is because I've seen actions by Israel in the United States
02:54:28that I believe are increasing Iran's incentives to do nuclear tests.
02:54:34And that once Iran would actually literally prepare to do nuclear tests,
02:54:41if we see those coming, that is another interaction.
02:54:44So that's my dynamic that I'm concerned about, but it's not at the level of 50, 70 percent.
02:54:50Right now, Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon because of a fatwa in place.
02:54:54So for the fatwa to be rescinded, the Supreme Leader would need to organize a council and they would need to...
02:55:00There's no chance that they could subvert the religious doctrine.
02:55:03They cannot.
02:55:03It's a theocracy.
02:55:04It's like saying, like, you know, let's ignore the First Amendment of the Constitution.
02:55:07Yeah, but that could be arranged pretty quickly.
02:55:10Well...
02:55:10And they're about to withdraw from the NPT, possibly.
02:55:14So they're already talking about...
02:55:15Right.
02:55:15So these are these under the hood actions.
02:55:18They first need to revoke that fatwa, okay, according to their system.
02:55:22So Iran would only develop a nuclear weapon if Israel and the United States were to attack first.
02:55:28Right?
02:55:28But if you're Iran...
02:55:29Oh, sorry.
02:55:30If you're Israel and the United States, you use a tactical nuclear weapon, say maybe on Pickax Mountain, right?
02:55:34What do you achieve?
02:55:36Building a deliverable nuclear weapon is much more complex than testing one.
02:55:43You have to have all sorts of elements come together.
02:55:46It would take time.
02:55:47Well, that's true for hydrogen generation two weapons, but not atomic weapons, Fat Man and Little Boy.
02:55:54So Fat Man and Little Boy are undergraduate.
02:55:58Well, no, Fat Man and Little Boy was delivered on aircraft.
02:56:02This was not put into a...
02:56:04The second generation was miniaturized to put into the missiles.
02:56:07I simply am saying that developing a nuclear weapon and testing it and making certain works takes a bit of time.
02:56:17Well, if North Korea, the 212th poorest country on the planet, can do 60, pretty sure this country can conquer this problem.
02:56:26Over a period of time, yes.
02:56:28Well, just pointing out, you're raising it to the bar.
02:56:31It must be miniaturized and look like our...
02:56:34If once we go back to World War II level nuclear weapons, which you just have to keep in mind, killed well over 100,000 people in those two explosions.
02:56:44The North Korean nuclear...
02:56:44Plenty of problems.
02:56:45The nuclear program in North Korea had lasted many years.
02:56:48Well, that's because they went to miniaturize it.
02:56:51I'm just pointing out that Iran may go much more quickly to atomic weapons.
02:56:55Well, the thing I want to do is I see the risk of nuclear war, even with Iraq, down the road with plenty of time to do it.
02:57:03It's just we're talking about things you're afraid of.
02:57:06If Iran tests two nuclear devices, I agree.
02:57:09If they...
02:57:09I think that the odds that we're going to look at those two nuclear tests...
02:57:13Let's say it's an October surprise.
02:57:14I totally...
02:57:15If they test two nuclear weapons in October, are you telling me, George?
02:57:19No.
02:57:19We're going to look at those two nuclear tests and say, don't worry, folks.
02:57:22If they test two nuclear weapons in October, you're absolutely right.
02:57:31I am saying, however, knowing something about developing nuclear weapons, that first test will
02:57:38probably fail and so on and so forth.
02:57:40There is time is all I'm saying, okay?
02:57:43Nothing more than that.
02:57:45What should people be paying the most attention to?
02:57:48Let's say the next two years, something like that.
02:57:51People that are listening.
02:57:52What are the warning signs, nuclear tests coming out of Iran?
02:57:57One of those.
02:57:58What are the little hurdles in terms of timing?
02:58:01You mentioned November.
02:58:02You also mentioned January.
02:58:03What are the bad signs or some of the good signs?
02:58:07What should people be paying attention to?
02:58:08If this is the sort of change which occurs, what would be the big inflection points that
02:58:13you guys are paying attention to over the next two years or so?
02:58:15The number one inflection point I'm tracking, and again, building on what I just told you about
02:58:20January, is whether we will see the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress and seated peacefully.
02:58:28Seated peacefully.
02:58:30So we need to understand that what we saw in November 2020 was an election did not go
02:58:38President Trump's way.
02:58:40Now, we have not seen President Trump as president have that happen again.
02:58:44He is about to be president.
02:58:46And we're going to see in November, 2026, will an election not go President Trump's way?
02:58:52And if it doesn't go President Trump's way, is he going to do anything to disturb the process of
02:59:00it going and that will go on for months because the election is November 3rd.
02:59:04Seating the Congress is January 3rd.
02:59:06I see that's what I'm really focused on because if that goes south,
02:59:10all of these issues are going to get much, much, much worse.
02:59:12I see the positive one evolving is the US-China economic entente and reducing tensions within that.
02:59:23If those two countries get together, the global system changes, possibly with proper presidents,
02:59:30stabilizes in a different form.
02:59:33So I'm looking at that as the most critical thing coming.
02:59:38My question is, will the United States target critical civil infrastructure in Iran
02:59:43next one or two months?
02:59:46Sorry, if the United States starts targeting power plants or desalination plants en masse,
02:59:51this war is now out of control.
02:59:53We are now beyond the escalation trap.
02:59:56It's complete madness.
02:59:58Even if it's done remotely, it doesn't need to be boots on the ground.
03:00:00It doesn't need to be nukes.
03:00:01If the United States targets Iranian power plants,
03:00:05Iran will target...
03:00:07In any way.
03:00:07In any way, Iran will target all of the Middle East energy infrastructure,
03:00:12the pipelines, the energy fields, and it's easy to do with drones.
03:00:16I agree with this.
03:00:17I just put the internal problem a little bit higher,
03:00:20but I agree with his assessment that, and this is part of my nightmare scenario.
03:00:23It's not like these two things are existing separately.
03:00:26They actually go together.
03:00:27That's what I'm trying to say.
03:00:28These things actually go together.
03:00:30And then I gave this presentation to my substack about the four steps that would be the nightmare
03:00:35scenario just in the Iran War.
03:00:37And this is the critical step.
03:00:41Because once you hit...
03:00:43And when I taught for the US Air Force in the 1990s, targeting electric power plants was one of the
03:00:49critical things we studied for months and months.
03:00:52We fortunately did it in the unclassified world so that I'm able to talk about this.
03:00:56We brought in people that ran the power plants, the engineers that built them.
03:01:00So I have a fair idea of the different places you would target the plants, what the consequences are.
03:01:06And there's a great paper that people are listening by Thomas Griffith called Targeting Electric Power.
03:01:14He was a military officer when he wrote this paper.
03:01:17It is the best paper on the consequences of targeting military power.
03:01:22And on my substack I wrote a lengthy piece, what targeting Tehran would really mean for the people of Tehran.
03:01:31When you take out the electric power in Tehran for a month and I walk through it, but...
03:01:38Not good, I imagine.
03:01:39Starvation.
03:01:39Oh my god.
03:01:40Starvation.
03:01:41You would...
03:01:41Oh yeah.
03:01:42It's much...
03:01:43Because all of the...
03:01:45So much of the food, 25% of the food in Tehran is under refrigeration.
03:01:51And that includes all the supermarkets.
03:01:54There's so much that is...
03:01:56And then you really start to run out of the ability to pump water.
03:02:00So things like water pumping stations in the Middle East where you depend on water.
03:02:05So there's so much of detail underneath this summary of droughts, starvation, mass evacuations of the city.
03:02:15But where do these 10 million people go?
03:02:18It's not like they just run to some other place and turn on the faucet.
03:02:22So this is the...
03:02:23The targeting of electric power is much worse than most people.
03:02:28Such a huge active wall.
03:02:28Oh my gosh.
03:02:29It's actually worse than a nuclear option.
03:02:31To do that would be worse than using a tactical nuke on pickaxe melting.
03:02:35In terms of destruction, quality of life change.
03:02:38In terms of the escalation ladder.
03:02:40Oh, right.
03:02:40Oh, the escalation ladder.
03:02:42Civilian death.
03:02:42No way.
03:02:43So if you hit...
03:02:44You're saying if you hit power plants with any kind of missile, that's more...
03:02:48Well, just to be super clear, there's two aim points on the electric power.
03:02:56And this is a target set that we've...
03:02:58The American air force has hit many times.
03:03:00You designed it.
03:03:00Yeah.
03:03:03Well, in order to understand why not to do it, to be clear...
03:03:07And by the way, from the moment of Tom Griffith's paper, and we did this in the mid-90s until right now, we've not targeted electric power.
03:03:15So that paper for 20 years has been the paper of the warning to all the generals and CENTCOM.
03:03:23This is what it means to target electric power.
03:03:26And it shows...
03:03:27And so what you are seeing in the plant itself...
03:03:32So if we could imagine...
03:03:33I don't see a good thing to use as a plant.
03:03:35But you can hit the cables that connect the plant to the grid, the electric power grid.
03:03:43That's like blowing a fuse in your home.
03:03:44That knocks it out for like...
03:03:46Pretty easy to fix.
03:03:46Yeah, about a week.
03:03:48Okay.
03:03:48Maybe two at most, but maybe...
03:03:49It's really about four or five days.
03:03:51But if you hit the hulls, the actual generating hulls,
03:03:55those are each special made.
03:03:58They're gigantic.
03:03:59They're much bigger than this whole building.
03:04:01And it takes six months to even design them and produce them,
03:04:05much less bring them back in.
03:04:07So once you go after the hulls...
03:04:10So when President Trump...
03:04:11His rhetoric here is worrisome because he's talking about...
03:04:16When he's talking about these massive consequences,
03:04:21this would fit with the description of going after the hulls.
03:04:25And you're not bringing this back with the Red Cross.
03:04:28And you're not going to come in and you're not going to support this with a giant Berlin airlift
03:04:33of massive water to all these people.
03:04:36This is...
03:04:37This is going to...
03:04:38This would be much more horrendous.
03:04:41And if you take out Tehran, that's 10 million people.
03:04:44It wouldn't be long before you took out another like 10 different nodes.
03:04:49And the entire 70% of the population would be without electric power.
03:04:54It's a much bigger problem than people realize.
03:04:57That is scary.
03:05:00That is terrifying.
03:05:01Gentlemen, I appreciate you all.
03:05:03This is...
03:05:04I don't know whether I'm reassured, but I'm definitely more educated, which is nice.
03:05:07Where should people go to check out everything that you've got going on?
03:05:10I'm on YouTube and Substack, Predictive History.
03:05:13I'm on Substack here, Escalation Trap, Professor Pape.
03:05:17And starting tomorrow, a brand new YouTube channel that's coming tomorrow afternoon,
03:05:23Pape on the Politics of Force.
03:05:24So stay tuned.
03:05:25And a new book.
03:05:26And a new book coming, Our Own Worst Enemies:
03:05:30America in the Age of Violent Populism.
03:05:33And my nightmare scenario was always that we'd have an election as discontentious
03:05:39with an international crisis, and they're both happening.
03:05:43Thank you.
03:05:44And for me, geopoliticalfutures.com is what you could visit.
03:05:49And I'm of the opinion humanity will survive again.
03:05:54As extremely improbable as it might seem.
03:05:57Beautiful.
03:05:57Gentlemen, I appreciate you all.
03:05:59Thank you very much.
03:05:59Thank you.
03:06:00Goodbye, my beauties.
03:06:00Thank you.
03:06:01That was great.
03:06:01Thanks so much.
03:06:02George.
03:06:02George.
03:06:03Thank you very much.
03:06:04That was awesome.
03:06:05That was awesome.
03:06:06I enjoyed that.
03:06:06Thanks, Chris.
03:06:09Congratulations.
03:06:10You made it to the end of a podcast episode without dying.
03:06:13Now, here's another one.
03:06:16Go on.
03:06:16Watch it.